231205

Welcome to the sixth and final newsletter of 2005.

Everyone at the ECO Centre would like to take this opportunity to wish you the season's greetings and a happy and prosperous New Year.

It has been an eventful year, both locally and globally. We have celebrated 25 years of Climate Concern - starting out as a loose group of volunteers providing loft insulation to vulnerable pensioners, while World Leaders gather together to argue with and cajole eachother that action to reduce the causes of accelearted Climate Change cannot be sidestepped or ignored.

http://www.ecocentre.org.uk/report-of-jubilee-week.html
http://www.ecocentre.org.uk/eco-centre-response-to-g8-summit.html

Major projects have concluded successfully. Energy for Tomorrow is now in its final stages with a pioneering grant scheme to encourage motorists to convert diesel engines to run on Vegetable Oil.

www.ecocentre.org.uk/vegoil.html

We have developed a range of education resources and are seeking funding to expand thsi section of our work.

http://www.ecocentre.org.uk/sustainable-schools.html

We have had some bad news too, a £100,000 project to develop biodiesel in Pembrokeshire was cancelled at the last moment. And this has had a serious knock on effect. Lack of funds has meant an end to our very high quality renewable energy advice and support service. We are still lobbying the Welsh Assembly Government to support such a service - in keeping with its own sustainable development commitments.  In the meantime, we are trying to raise funds through our website.

http://www.ecocentre.org.uk/why-donate.html

We have published our annual report and newsletter. Last year we won the Welsh Language Boards award for bi-lingual design. Both last yeara dn this years newsletters and other corporate information is available in the website.

http://www.ecocentre.org.uk/the-west-wales-eco-centre.html

The ECO Centre website itself has undergone a couple of significant upgrades. Most notably is our online news service, which streams in daily articles concnered with Climate Change and the environment.

http://www.ecocentre.org.uk/climate-news/Dec-2005/

Headlines are viewable from the main home page, whilst an archive of previous articles is collected by month. We will soon have a search facility available to make it even more useful.  The number of online visits to the ECO Centre has increased steadily month on month. We received more than 18000 unique visits last month which is very satisfying. Thanks to everyone for their interest in the West Wales ECO Centre.

Finally, we wouldn't be a sustainable development charity without giving out some tips on a green Christmas, so have a look at:

http://www.ecocentre.org.uk/a-green-christmas.html

With all best wishes for 2006.

The West Wales ECO Centre Team.