Category Archives: events

Fire Under the Stars: Environmental songs, stories and humour with Eric Maddern

Posted on June 8, 2010 | Comments Off on Fire Under the Stars: Environmental songs, stories and humour with Eric Maddern


We became human sit­ting round a fire under the stars. We are now burn­ing up the plan­et. We are a mir­acle in the Universe yet we are under­min­ing our sur­viv­al and the sur­viv­al of the Garden of Eden that is our lovely, lonely, liv­ing Planet Earth.

This show is a bold, inspir­ing, hope­ful and heart-warm­ing take on the big pic­ture and the step up we must make.

Eric Maddern is an Australian born storyteller, sing­er-song­writer and author

St. James’ Church hall, Rosefield Place

Sunday June 20th 7.30pm. Suggested dona­tion: £5. Suitable for all aged 10 upwards.

After the show there will be a chance to find out how you can get involved in PEDAL’s latest food and energy projects.

Eric is a great per­former and I’m sure it will be a great event!

Download the poster

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Posted in carbon reduction, Energy, events, Food

Donkey Field Community Orchard Midsummer Celebration

Posted on June 8, 2010 | 1 Comment

Poster for Orchard Midsummer CelebrationSaturday 19 June from 6 pm.

Everyone is wel­come to come to the party; please just bring yourselves, food to share and some­thing to drink, wash­able cup, plate etc, plus a music­al instru­ment if you play.  Feel free to bring a bar­be­cue if you like but not dis­pos­able ones please.

Brunstane Road South/Gilberstoun, just oppos­ite Brunstane Station.

Download the Poster

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Posted in events, Orchards

Container Growing Course — Town Hall

Posted on May 31, 2010 | Comments Off on Container Growing Course — Town Hall

The first PEDAL Container Growing course will begin on Saturday 5th of June at 2pm. Using a strip of cleared ash path at the back of Portobello Town Hall, Course Tutor Dave Roberts will instruct par­ti­cipants on the con­struc­tion of tim­ber raised beds and the prin­ciples of garden­ing in these and oth­er con­tain­ers. The course is aimed at those inter­ested in grow­ing more of their own fresh salads, greens and fruit but with lim­ited space. If you’d like to sign up to the next course, con­tact Peter Upton at peter@pedal-porty.org.uk

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Posted in events

Water saving campaign

Posted on May 27, 2010 | 1 Comment

By the first week of June every­one in Portobello should be receiv­ing a Home Water check form through their doors. By send­ing back com­pleted forms, indi­vidu­als will get a report on ways they can reduce water use. This can save energy and money, and cut car­bon emis­sions. Money can be saved by redu­cing hot water use and increas­ing effi­ciency of water heat­ing, but huge amounts of energy energy is also used to treat water for con­sump­tion and for it’s treat­ment after use, so by redu­cing unne­ces­sary water use we can cut car­bon emis­sions too. The water sav­ing cam­paign is being run by Energy Saving Scotland advice centre in part­ner­ship with PEDAL.

On Wednesday 2nd June there will be a stall in the Bath Street Scotmid store where Oliver Musgrave from Changeworks will be there to answer ques­tions about water sav­ing, and you can also find out about oth­er cur­rent PEDAL projects.

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Posted in carbon reduction, Energy, events

Energy group meeting

Posted on May 27, 2010 | Comments Off on Energy group meeting

Please note: The Energy group meet­ing on Thursday 10th June at 7.30pm is now post­poned until 1st July. The meet­ing is not in the PEDAL office but please con­tact PEDAL for more details.

We wel­come new ideas for devel­op­ing our cur­rent energy plans and ideas for the future.

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Posted in Energy, events

Dig In Porty! Free courses on growing your own veg

Posted on May 17, 2010 | 2 Comments

Would you be inter­ested in learn­ing to grow more of your own fruit and veg?

We hope to offer a short course over 4 Saturdays, begin­ning on the 29th of May at Telferton Allotments. At the moment we are only able to offer the course to six people on a first-come, first-served basis. This course on grow­ing Spring and Summer Greens will cov­er the the­ory and prac­tice of dig­ging, under­stand­ing your soil, com­post, seed sow­ing  and care of your plants.

If there is suf­fi­cient interest we’d like to run oth­er courses on how to grow in raised beds & con­tain­ers, and on grow­ing potatoes.

Courses are being offered free, although there will be a small charge (£10) to cov­er the cost of seeds and some materials.

If you or someone you know is inter­ested in these courses, or in being kept informed of oth­er courses PEDAL may offer in the future, please con­tact Peter (peter@pedal-porty.org.uk) or Polly (polly@pedal-porty.org.uk).

We look for­ward to hear­ing from you!

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Posted in Composting, Courses, events, Food, gardening

Food group meeting

Posted on March 30, 2010 | Comments Off on Food group meeting

The next food group meet­ing will be on Wednesday 21 April, 7:30pm at the Dalriada. Hope you can make it!

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Posted in events, Food

Brief cartoon Video explaining Cap and Trade

Posted on November 22, 2009 | Comments Off on Brief cartoon Video explaining Cap and Trade

The Story of Cap and Trade

Although they sound sim­i­lar, Cap and Trade and Cap and Share are entirely dif­fer­ent approaches to cli­mate change:

CAP and SHARE (www.capandshare.org) is a sys­tem which can be used to CAP (to lim­it and dra­mat­i­cally reduce the car­bon com­ing into the coun­try in line with the sci­ence), and to SHARE (to dis­trib­ute the rev­enue raised to ensure peo­ple have the money to cope with the increased price in all goods and ser­vices which have car­bon content).

In con­trast, CAP and TRADE (the EU response to cli­mate change, and the approach being pro­posed at Copen­hagen) sim­ply enables busi­ness as usu­al (soar­ing emis­sions, soar­ing fuel prices and soar­ing prof­its for the heavy emit­ters) to con­tinue. See this superb 20 minute car­toon expla­na­tion of how Cap and Trade works: The Story of Cap and Trade

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Posted in events, Food

Next orchard workday

Posted on November 5, 2009 | Comments Off on Next orchard workday

The next work­day at the Donkey Field Community Orchard will be on Sunday November 29th, 11am — 3pm.  The orch­ard is really start­ing to take shape now — BTCV have made a won­der­ful path, which, when fin­ished, will give wheel­chair access to the site.  Come along on Nov 29th and have a look!

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Posted in events, Food, Orchards

Great Bike Parade, market and comedy on Car Free Day 09!

Posted on August 23, 2009 | Comments Off on Great Bike Parade, market and comedy on Car Free Day 09!

On Sunday 20th Sept we held our annu­al Bike Parade start­ing from the Prom at the bot­tom of Kings Rd at 1.30. We had double the num­ber of bikes as last year — it seemed like we had lit­er­ally hun­dreds of dressed up bikes — and this year we had with us the amaz­ing arm­chair bike!

Over 50 kids brought their bikes and their ima­gin­a­tions to the ‘dress up your bike’ work­shop at Towerbank Primary School Ashpit on the Friday before — and their handi­work was on dis­play on the Parade, along­side adults trees, dragons, flags, and much more!

The loc­al mar­ket out­side the lib­rary, Rosefield Avenue, was well atten­ded (the loc­al bak­ing went fast!) and the ‘Isle of Egg’ Kids Eco-Comedy in St James Church Hall, was a very funny eco­lo­gic­al fable which the kids loved, and the per­formers only just man­aged to stop the kids from tak­ing over!

On Monday Sept 28th we kick off the Bike to Work scheme — feel free to join us out­side the Town Hall at 8.55 to cycle into the City!

In case you missed all the fun — our 2009 Car Free Day Poster is avail­able  HERE!

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Posted in events, Transport