Castle Apple and Pear Scrumping weekend

On weekend of the 9th and 10th October, as part of the 10:10 global action on climate change we decided to do an apple themed event and we joined in with the local team hackney harvest to go round the local area to pick apples and pears that would usually go to waste. The hackney harvest team started the project this year, a there is so much fruit going to waste from local fruit trees which are mainly in people's back gardens and also many in public places. Some of the trees are really big, and difficult to harvest from, and sometimes the tree owners they end up with such an abundance of fruit that it is too much to deal with, or they don't even pick them at all and see the dropping fruit as a nuisance.

Thanks to the inspiration from projects such as the scrumping project in Walthamstow - who started this idea a few years ago, and abundance project in sheffield. This is a great way to get this fruit put to good use in the local community. The fruit gets picked (with permission from the owners!) some fruit going back to the owners, and the rest is distributed to community groups as fruit or as juice, desserts, chutneys, jams and cider!

Getting climbers up the trees!

As a first year trial, I thought it would be a great idea to get some Castle climbers involved, using their skills and strength to climb tall fruit trees to shake the high branches which wouldn't usually be reached! We went to a back garden of someone I know on Allerton Road (a friend who I happen to pass while he was picking up his growing commmunities veg bag from the Castle pick up point). He told me he had a huge pear tree completely covered in fruit. We went there in full force, couple of climbers up the tree, and it was raining pears! Think we ended up with about 80kg of pears! And that is from one tree!
The next day, I borrowed an apple press, and we spent the day pressing the fruit into juice, making apple fritters, and playing some apple games, and we even sang a song, thanks to Robert Malies who turned up with his guitar and made up a song for us to sing along to! (you can here it here) It was lovely and sunny, and some of the Sunday climbers who came to climb with their children, kept on finding them out in the garden with us helping us press juice, trying the apple fritters and trying the apple bobbing! Some of the juice was drunk by us all, then some sold in the Castle cafe, some made into apple cakes (thanks to Sam in the cafe) and some, (well most of it) is fermenting somewhere in the castle, slowing turning into cider! To be drunk on after a very hard cold workday in the garden.

Next year, there is definitely potential to get tons more fruit! After chatting to a few locals about their big fruit trees,it seems they are more than happy to let us in their back gardens to climb and harvest their unwanted fruit. See more photos here

Sustainability Policy - v2.0

Well, it's not the most fun or glamorous job, but a key part of a proper environmental management system is to take a step back and review the general policy and aims. Why are we doing this? What exactly are we trying to do?

So version 2.0 of our Sustainability Policy has been proposed, debated and finally approved. You can download a copy of our new policy here. Below I've also listed some of the changes we've made and why we've made them.

1. Changing the title from 'Environmental Policy' to 'Sustainability Policy'. This is more accurate because our policy is based on the business being sustainable in an economic, social and, of course, ecological sense.

2. Including the shop. We've taken over the management of the climbing shop at The Castle (formerly Urban Rock) and we will be holding the shop to the same high standards that we have for the rest of the centre. There's a lot of research yet to be done in the way of reducing environmental impact in the climbing industry, but we've opened up this dialogue with our suppliers and we're excited to hear that many of them are already waking up and making changes to the way they do business, the materials they use and the waste the produce.

3. Revising our water policy. Our first policy stated that we wanted to be 'water neutral'. What does this mean? Well, we weren't sure either. Of course, we want to reduce water consumption, but we also don't want to have to use up more energy to keep harvested rainwater to a drinking standard. We commissioned a paper on this subject from our environmental consultant - Es Tresider- and he laid out some facts for us. We'd need to treat and ciruclate water every 24 hours for it to be adequate for drinking and washing. Weighing this up against the relative efficiency of the mains water system, we concluded that it would be more reasonable for us to reformulate our water aims. So, we're going to come off the mains water for the garden and use rainwater collected from the roofs and greywater from the centre. With the rest of the centre, our focus will remain to reduce our water consumption. To this end, we have put in waterless urinals and we will be building composting toilets in the next 2-5 years.

4. Developing a garden based on permaculture principles to grow food for the cafe. Those of you following our Sustainability Blog will probably be surprised to find out that the garden - undoubtedly one of our biggest projects- wasn't even mentioned in our original Environmental Policy! We couldn't leave it out, so it's there- loud and proud- in version 2. Although we are still limited by our lack of a proper kitchen, but our Cafe Manager, Thomas, has delighted with roasted potatoes, salads, gratins and all kinds of other treats fresh from the garden.

5. The final change is that the Statement of Intent is signed by all of our Core Management Team in addition to the Board of Directors- showing real commitment from the top to making this happen.

Hope you'll find this inspiring, interesting or even intriguing!

Best Regards,

Audrey Seguy
Managing Director