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Making Swanage Sustainable

After the well-earned Christmas break, it was back to business this week with our first meeting of 2020. And it couldn’t have been more inspirational with the visit of Sarah Spurling.

Sarah is the Litter Free Coast and Sea Project Officer for Dorset Council and spoke to us about the various initiatives underway to remove, reduce and eliminate the amount of rubbish reaching our beaches and coasts.

Sarah explained the many ways in which waste reaches our beaches in the first place and the efforts being made to educate people, not only in the correct ways of disposing of their waste but also how to prevent it being created in the first place.

Local schools and other organisations such as Durlston Country Park are getting involved in the projects that are underway. And Sarah explained why, although it seems an enormous task to rid the world of single-use plastic, every little bit helps and every individual can make a difference.

As a result of the efforts that have been made with local businesses in reducing the amount of single-use plastic, Swanage has secured ‘Plastic Free Town’ status but Sarah doesn’t want to stop there and is continuing to encourage more business to embrace the initiative.

Following her talk, there were many questions from the floor and we could easily have spent several more hours discussing the ideas that came out of the talk.

On behalf of the club, Chris Wallis proposed a vote of thanks for a really thought-provoking talk. More details are available from :

Litter Free Coast and Sea

Sustainable Swanage

Love our Beach

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“Everyone Needs a Shed”

. . . is the strap line for the latest project to be undertaken at Durlston Country Park.

We were delighted to welcome Ben Tolley, who is one of the rangers up at Durlston, who came to talk to us about the history of the park and some of the latest developments taking place.

It’s history dates back to George Burt, nephew of builder John Mowlem, who was keen to develop an area where people could enjoy the natural environment. But as a well travelled man, he was also keen to introduce some of the things he discovered on his travels and the park is full of non-indigenous species.

The park is a recent recipient of a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and the ‘Durlston Pleasure Grounds’ project has been underway since 2018 to further develop the site. Already the ‘Shed’ has been refurbished and opened in May of this year, enabling people of different ages and abilities, both able bodied and those with restricted mobility, other disabilities or health problems, to share skills and come together through volunteering.

Other plans for the project include thinning out some of the tree coverage to allow more light to come in to the woodland areas, refurbishing the footpaths and rebuilding the dry stone walls.

Although familiar to most of the audience, Ben really brought the park to life during his talk and there were a number of questions from the floor. On behalf of the club, Rotarian Jenny Hynan proposed a vote of thanks to Ben for coming to see us.