The Great Collaboration interactive online platform will track and capture information about the carbon reduction actions that individuals. business, community groups and schools in your local community are taking and planning.
The platform will summarise what help is needed and where interest and opportunities lie. Information will inform Parish Carbon Reduction Action Plans and will support community building by sharing knowledge & experiences, identify information/training events needed, allow cost saving from group purchases and present opportunities for collectively financed initiatives.
The platform will increasingly support the development of policies and actions at parish, county and national levels.
A "personalised" platform for each participating parish council will be made available to communities as a link from a parish council’s existing local website, with the potential for information about local support in each county where it is used.The Great Collaboration interactive online platform will track and capture information about the carbon reduction actions that individuals. business, community groups and schools in your local community are taking and planning.
Outputs from the platform will include:
The 'Great Collaboration' Platform is a partnership project between Herefordshire Green Network, Caplor Horizons and Fownhope Parish Council and has been funded by the MCS Foundation.
It has involved collaborations with with HALC (Herefordshire Association of Local Councils), NALC (National Association of Local Councils), the Centre for Alternative Technology and Herefordshire based national sustainability experts.
Significant research by the Herefordshire Green Network has gone into formulating the Actions, and we are very grateful for the scrutiny this work has receive from expert reviewers including the Zero Carbon Britain team at the Centre for Alternative Technology. Where appropriate we have collated additional background data and information to demonstrates sources of advice and information.
The platform has been constructed by Caplor Horizons, who have collaborated in its development, and incorporated features to make it easy to update information in the future.
We see the initial site as a “proof of concept’ and will be continuing to incorporate feedback as it is tested by a number of local communities, including Fownhope Parish Council in Herefordshire, who have given valuable feedback during its development.
The content of the platform is based around an easily accessible list of actions that are applicable to everyday life covering the areas of Buildings, Transport, Food and Waste, Land Use, Energy, Money and Use Your Voice.
People interacting with the Great Collaboration web platform (as individuals, business or groups) will navigate through these themes, and indicate if they have already done them, are going to do them or need help to do them.
By interacting with the platform, information is captured so that data can be provided about what people are doing, committing to or need help with. This data will be presented in a series of graphs, showing individual and parish level information: a valuable "snap shot" of current and planned carbon reduction actions which can be further analysed and reported as the platform functionality is developed in future versions.
The platform also allows people to explore the reasons why Actions are needed, local level actions and initiatives, other impacts and co-benefits (such as social or ecological) and lots of links to further sources information. Each action also gives an indication of its cost and carbon impact.
We researched the 10 - 15 most carbon impactful household / individual actions for each section, broadly categorised as:
We ranked these actions for their annual carbon reduction impact (based on a variety of sources):
Based on research, we ranked the costs of the actions:
Once the pilot process is complete the Herefordshire Green Network and Caplor Horizons are planning that it will be made available to parish councils around Herefordshire and then nationally over the course of 2021.
HGN are aiming to be able to support your initial use of the platform, and help you understand what the data reveals about your parish.
Further funding is being sought to support this work and to develop the platform further.
The Great Collaboration interactive online platform will track and capture information about the carbon reduction actions that individuals, business, community groups and schools in your local community are taking and planning.
The platform will:
Information will inform Parish Carbon Reduction Action Plans and will support community-building by sharing knowledge & experiences, identifying any information/training events needed, allow cost saving from group purchases and present opportunities to come together to save money.
The platform will increasingly support the development of policies and actions at parish, county and national levels.