A Green Folkestone Town Council: Motion Agreed by Town Council

Folkestone Town Council has committed itself to a greener future, seeking to use green electricity and recycled paper in future. Those are some of the action points of a motion to the full Folkestone Town Council on 12 July proposed by Lib Dem Councillors Tim Prater and Martin Salmon, which was agreed by the meeting.

The motion also called on the Town Council to look urgently at how it could become a signatory on the Nottingham Declaration on Climate Change (www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/housingbuildings/localauthorities/NottinghamDeclaration/) which over 200 councils have signed up to date.

The motion "A Green Folkestone Town Council" as passed read:

"This Council strongly welcomes the moves for Shepway District Council to sign up to the Nottingham Declaration on Climate Change. Climate change poses a genuine threat to our planet. The scale of the challenge means that all sectors of the community have to be involved if we are to meet targets for reducing emissions and adapting to climate change. Local Authorities in particular have a crucial role to play in responding to this challenge.

"This Council endorses the aims of the Nottingham Declaration. This Council requests the Town Clerk to work with the F&GP Committee to report back to this Council on how we can meet that challenges of the declaration and become a signatory to the declaration ourselves at the earliest possible opportunity.

"This Council especially endorses that the Nottingham Declaration commitment to achieve a significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from our own authority's operations, especially energy sourcing and use, travel and transport, waste production and disposal and the purchasing of goods and services. As a start to that process, independent of the above report, this Council will commit where practical to:

• Immediately carbon off-set the mileage of the civic vehicle, and seek at the earliest economic opportunity to replace with an energy efficient alternative such as a Prius;
• Switch energy suppliers to an appropriate green supplier;
• Develop a regular and effective environmental audit and reporting programme to produce recommendations on ways to incrementally decrease waste and reduce energy use for existing and new Council activities;
• Ensure all future FTC publications and stationery use recycled paper, and display a statement saying so;
• Immediately reduce paper use by sending copy Council Committee documents to Councillors by email only (where the Councillor has email) and they do not sit on that Committee.

"This Council believes that these proposals form a start to the process of contributing, at a local level, to the delivery of the UK Climate Change Programme, the Kyoto Protocol and the target for carbon dioxide reduction by 2010.

"This Council will pro-actively promote each element of this green agenda through the local press and council publications as they are achieved, and to offer guidance to local residents on how they can follow the example to spread the impact across Folkestone.