Blairgowrie, Rattray & District Climate Café® started in May 2016 after Len and Kay who were going to the Birnam Climate Café thought it made sense to see if anyone was interested in forming one in Blairgowrie too.
Our Climate Café® has led to the creation of a number of independent projects including active and sustainable transport (Strathmore Cycle Network), local food initiatives (NeighbourFood), home energy advice (The Heat Project) and repair café (Blairgowrie and Rattray Repair Café). Other projects have been the Last Straw campaign, a palm oil blog, and crisp packet and blister pack collections for recycling with accrued funds for charities.
There has also been a focus on trees, tree planting and the urgent need to give trees better protection locally (from unauthorised felling for new developments). A tree planting project (Tayside Woodland Partnerships) has also been created to establish and maintain woodlands in Tayside for habitat restoration and sequestering carbon.
We have enjoyed close links with the Blairgowrie High School, run annual apple pressing sessions every autumn, have been hosting Climate Conversations in addition to the regular Climate Café meetings, and highlighting days such as Earth Day and global warming with the colours of Ed Hawkins’ stripes.
HEAT Project
Started from a conversation at the Café, the HEAT Project has delivered direct energy saving advice to over 2500 households in Perth and Kinross, helping achieve significant savings in energy bills and has helped households to install new insulation, alternative heating systems and reduce annual CO2 emission in the area by over 2000 tonnes and helped people out of fuel poverty. Throughout it’s time The Heat Project has worked with schools on climate education, established local food initiatives such as NeighbourFood (now run independently) and had a strong presence in the community to raise awareness of issues around climate and energy. It has funding to continue for a further 2 years, focusing on home energy efficiency and fuel poverty.
Sparking wider conversation
Blairgowrie, Rattray and District Climate Café® have been putting on a series of talks or ‘climate conversations’ with local experts on topics such as air pollution, waste, resource use and recycling, and climate action. They also put on the occasional film screening or workshop, the last of which was for an Arts project about sustainable travel.
They also often have stands at town events such as the annual Blairgowrie, Rattray Highland Games to enable discussions out and about.
Big Climate Conversation
In October 2019, following and inspired by the #BigClimateConversation event held in Birnam, a similar open event was held in Blairgowrie, organised by the Climate Café®. Around 200 people attended on the day. There were stands for each of the major climate-related issues including energy, travel, land use and young people representing their concerns. There were also short talks given through the day.