City farm in eco prize final

A project based at Hackney City Farm in London to help reduce carbon emissions is a finalist in a major environmental competition with a prize fund of £1m. Hackney is one of 10 organisations and community groups will now be putting their ideas to the test in a bid to win the prize offered by NESAT - the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. The Hackney project, called Back 2 Earth, has ambitious plans to make Hackney City Farm an environmental impact centre, implementing 60 big ideas for carbon reduction across the community. Among the practical ideas it will introduce are a series of workshops at the farm to engage local residents and businesses in its activities.

The target is to reduce the farm’s CO2 emissions by 30 per cent in year one and 60 per cent by year two. These improvements will focus on six categories: education, energy and water, food, resource use and recycling, eco building and transport.

A roving pedal-powered market stall will be appearing around Hackney, offering practical advice to local people about taking action on carbon reduction, highlighting a range of easily accessible, low-tech solutions.

Central to achieving its goals, is the farm’s use of volunteers. The farm will recruit a team of 15 “Green Ambassadors” who will be trained in a range of new skills, which they will then take out into the wider community.

One area of training will be in biofuel technology, with the ambassadors working to set up a system that will use waste fat from the farm’s Italian restaurant to convert into biofuel to run the farm’s van. Once established, it’s hoped a biofuel scheme will be extended across the local area.

The farm already has excellent links with a variety of partner organisations that enable it reach out to and recruit those who can most benefit including local children, refugees, elderly people and those from a range of ethnic backgrounds.

Back2Earth works with local education provider, the Learning Trust, to provide schooling to pupils excluded from schools. Six children a year receive one-to-one tutoring in English and Maths, while also working on the farm.

More than 200 volunteers were involved in the farm’s recent success story – building a low tech yet cutting-edge ‘straw bale building’. The structure, which is used for workshops and hired out to raise money to put back into the project, was built with a ‘no compromise’ ethos using only reclaimed or recycled materials. The building will be fitted with solar panels installed by its army of volunteers.

Back 2 Earth hopes their examples of carbon reducing measures will be replicated on other city farms and in other organisations around the UK and beyond.

Vicky Costello, who is on the NESTA Innovations team said: “Over the next year we will follow the Finalists and work with them to understand the impacts of their projects, both for the purpose of judging the prize and to demonstrate to the very real impact that community-led action on climate change can have.”