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We are sending this newsletter slightly earlier than usual due to the upcoming general election. Your next Climate Emergency newsletter will be on Monday 8 July.
 Celebrate Great Big Green Week with local events
The Great Big Green Week is a national celebration of action on climate change, which takes place across the UK from 8 to 16 June.
Take part in an event happening locally to find out more.
Free Nature Day at Rooks Nest Wood
Save the date for the free Nature Day at Rooks Nest Wood jointly hosted by us and Thames Basin Heaths Partnership on Saturday 8 June, from 12 noon to 4pm.
The highlight of the event is a 45-minute guided walk with warden Richard from the partnership starting at 1.30pm. He will explain how Rooks Nest Wood was transformed from former agricultural grazing land to a thriving nature reserve.
Free wildlife spotter sheets will be given out to help you explore the meadows and woodland space listed on the Greenspace on your doorstep guide, published by our partners. You can also take home a copy of the guidebook for free.
The event is suitable for all, especially families with school age children. No booking is needed, just drop-in.
Losing Eden: Why our minds need the wild
Award-winning author and journalist Lucy Jones is coming to Wokingham Library to talk about the relationship between the human psyche and the more-than-human world.
This event is being held on Tuesday 11 June from 10.30am to 11.30am and is free to attend, but places must be booked. Find out more about why we need contact, connection and kinship with the natural world.
Nature recovery webinar
Join an online discussion about the latest on the Berkshire Nature Recovery Strategy. This is an opportunity to learn about the progress of the strategy and to see the priorities being established.
The webinar runs from 6.30pm to 8pm on Tuesday 11 June and it is free to attend. The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead is the responsible authority for the Berkshire strategy, supported by other local authorities, including us.
Go on a bug hunt
Wokingham Town Council is encouraging people to take part in a bug hunt for a citizen science project. Whether it is at your local park, at your school or even in your garden, everyone can get involved. You can find out more about the Wokingham Big Bug Hunt and download a count sheet online. Don't forget to email your results to Wokingham in Bloom or drop them off at the town hall.
Reading Climate Festival
Take part in two weeks of free events from Saturday 8 June to Friday 21 June. The fifth annual Reading Climate Festival offers a mix of online and in-person events. Learn how to take action on climate change and find out about organisations and services that make it easy.
 Get involved in green week through our libraries
Green heart pledge
Create a green origami heart to be displayed at your local library for The Great Big Green Week. Fold a heart at your local library and write your green pledge on the hearts for display. If you are creating a green heart pledge at home, send a photo of your pledge to us by email.
Storytime
There will be a green-themed Storytime at Wokingham Library on Tuesday 11 June from 4pm to 4.30pm. This a drop-in event aimed at children aged four to seven and registration is not required.
Book displays
Selected libraries will have displays on nature and biodiversity. There will also be a collection of recommended books on our digital book platform Libby.
Nature poem competition
Children are invited to express their creativity by sending us their poems on nature. There are three categories and the winner of each will receive a £20 book voucher. The categories are:
- Seven and under
- Aged eight to 11
- Aged 12 to 18
Submit your entry by email, providing your name and age, or you can drop off your poem at your local library.
 What you can do beyond The Great Big Green Week
At this time of year, you can see wildlife all around you. One of the best ways to contribute to nature recovery is by joining citizen science projects, recording wildlife observations and using the information to inform conservation measures. Here are some that we think are interesting:
If you are looking to record species, but would like some help via an online community, you might enjoy joining iNaturalist.
There are many apps for smartphones that are great for identifying wildlife that you are able to photograph. One of our favourites is Obsidentify.
 Butterfly restaurants: Feeding the next generation
If you want to make a small change in your garden that could benefit some of the most beautiful species in the country, why not plant some of the foodplants for butterflies? It is even more helpful to introduce the foodplants for the caterpillars, as this is the crucial stage at which they get most of their energy.
The Holly Blue butterfly alternates between Holly and Ivy as a foodplant, as it has two generations each year. Orange-tip butterfly caterpillars like to feed on Garlic Mustard or Cuckooflower and both of these species are foodplants for the Green-veined White.
If you have a patch of nettles, you may already be supporting Comma, Peacock, Red Admiral and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies. Just be prepared to let them grow on through the summer so the caterpillars can mature.
Some species such as Gatekeeper, Large Skipper, Marbled White, Meadow Brown, Ringlet, Small Skipper and Speckled Wood like to feed on various grasses in different levels of shade and dampness. That patch of grass that you have let grow could be supporting one or more of these.
 Did you miss No Mow May? Then Let it Bloom in June
Did you take part in No Mow May and let your lawn grow long? We would love to see pictures of the flowers that came up. If you didn’t, why not Let It Bloom in June?
Let it Bloom June is a national campaign run by the charity Plantlife, which sees areas of grass left to flourish to provide a boost for insects and wildlife while supporting biodiversity.
Don’t miss out on getting up close and seeing what is growing, though. It is fine to cut paths through the long grass. You may find that there are different flowers that grow along the line of these paths, making the most of the slightly different conditions.
Send in your photos from No Mow May and have fun with Let it Bloom June!
 New bins arriving ahead of waste collection changes
We have taken delivery of more than 60,000 black wheeled rubbish bins, which we are issuing to households across the borough.
This is part of the upcoming changes to our waste collections, which will start on Monday 12 August and we expect to deliver to all properties by the end of July.
You should not use your new bin straight away, as we won’t empty it until collections change in the summer. For now, please keep putting out one blue rubbish bag a week.
When your bin arrives, we strongly recommend marking it with your house number to ensure it is returned to you when the new collections begin.
Each wheeled rubbish bin will come sealed with tape and will have a recyclable cardboard hanger reminding you not to use it yet.
From mid-August, we will empty your new black bin rubbish every two weeks and also collect recycling from the existing green bags every two weeks. You can pick up more free green bags if you need them.
Adopt a Street
Would you like to help make a difference to your neighbourhood? We currently have more than 800 volunteers across the borough who are part of the Adopt a Street scheme.
Volunteers pick up litter and help to keep their local area clean and tidy. We provide a litter picker, high-visibility vest and green Adopt a Street bags, which get collected alongside kerbside rubbish.
We are very grateful to have so many community-minded people who spend their time and effort to make a positive impact on our environment.
Take a virtual tour of local recycling centres
If you are new to the borough, or don't know much about how recycling centres in our area work, take a virtual tour of the facilities to learn more.
Re3 has recently launched virtual tours of the recycling centres in Reading and Bracknell to help residents familiarise with the sites, so they can better prepare for their visits.
The virtual tours provide views of key areas inside the two recycling centres. There are also useful tips on how to use the facilities safely and explain what to recycle where on site.
 Restore your old items at one of these repair cafés
The repair café community in our borough is thriving. In the last two years, four repair cafés have opened their doors to residents, giving hundreds of once broken or faulty items a new lease of life.
All repair cafés are run by volunteers, who have only one mission: saving things from going to waste.
Check the dates of the upcoming repair café sessions, if you need to have anything fixed:
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Wokingham Repair Café, All Saints Church in Wokingham, second Saturday of the month, 10am to 12.30pm
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Spencers Wood Village Hall Repair Café, first Sunday of the month, 10am to 1pm
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Repair Café at Lambs Lane Primary School in Spencers Wood, third Sunday of the month, 10am to 1pm
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Woodley Repair Café, Christ Church in Woodley, first Sunday of the month, 2pm to 4pm
In addition, a new repair café is due to open in Earley later this year and volunteers are being sought to help run it. It is hoped the new café will be up and running by September.
 Walk, cycle and wheel with Beat the Street game
Beat the Street is a free, fun initiative that will see Wokingham Borough transformed into a giant game.
Beat the Street is a real life walking, cycling and wheeling game for a whole community, which runs from Wednesday 5 June to Wednesday 17 July in Wokingham town centre, Woodley, Twyford, Wargrave, Finchampstead, Winnersh and Hurst.
See how far you can walk, cycle, run, scoot and wheel in six weeks, with great challenges to enjoy and prizes up for grabs.
Beat the Street is being delivered by Intelligent Health in partnership with My Journey Wokingham.
For more information on everything you need to know on taking part in the game, please visit Beat the Street Wokingham's website.
 Have your say on Borough Vision at library sessions
Visitors to libraries in Lower Earley, Woodley, Finchampstead and Twyford will have the chance to help shape a vision for the borough next month.
The Wokingham Vision 2035 is being created by partners from a range of organisations to be a guiding document that sets out the sort of place they want the borough to be by 2035.
One of the key ambitions in this vision is around protecting and improving our places. We care about the environment and want to protect it. We love the green spaces and enjoy spending time in the countryside, as well as our town and village centres. As a community we take pride in what it looks like and want high standards maintained.
But we are worried about the changes needed to reduce carbon emissions; loss of green space; unequal access to nature and potential threat to its clean and tidy appearance.
After significant engagement with residents and community groups, a draft vision has been written and the partners are seeking views on it, with drop-in sessions at libraries being one of the ways people can take part.
We have created a dedicated webpage for this vision on our engagement website, representing all our partners.
- Finchampstead Library, Friday 7 June, 10am to 12 noon
- Woodley Library, Saturday 15 June, 10am to 12 noon
- Twyford Library, Friday 21 June, 2pm to 5pm
- Lower Earley Library, Monday 24 June, 10am to 12 noon
Alternatively, you can take the survey online. A draft copy of the vision is available to read and our survey will remain open until Friday 28 June.
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