Gödöllő Climate Club
25 January 2011
Minutes – English summary
People present: 17 persons.
We started our meeting with a quick introduction again because of new visitors. Many people made us happy by bringing homemade cakes and foods. Kristóf showed us the items – which we collected at the previous meeting in December – which we would talk about over the next two hours.
At first we discussed about preparing some statistics on the waste we generate. We could collect data about the composition of our waste over two months and then publish the results in the local news. We agreed that, for the sake of easy counting, we could account using units of litres. We gave out a table for collecting data and we will also send it in email to people who are interested in it. Our aim is to motivate urban waste management to design a new waste management system which compensates people who produce less waste.
Kristóf reported that ‘Zöld Híd Ltd’. (Green Bridge – who are responsible for waste collection in Gödöllő) can show their selective waste management site to the group. We decided to visit it on a weekday because it would be more interesting to see the site on stream.
Our next issue was a home energy audit. Almost everybody in the room has done this at least once already. Edina pointed to the most common mistakes - for example, some people do not pay attention to the temperature of their fridge, but we also generally forget to maintain our equipment, wash clothes too many times a week or eat too much meat (and do not know where it comes from).
Many good examples can be found in the audits (such as organizing car-sharing, exchanging things or building community) and people who fill them out are very honest (for example they confess to showering for 10 minutes!) 
We discussed our water drinking habits and got good tips about healthy and tasty water sources: The Petőfi-source at Domony is the best around here.
Csaba Szabó with shared us his experience: shops do not separately collect light bulbs because - according to Hungarian law - they are not hazardous waste. Csaba Laurán told us a piece of good news: there is a shop in Gödöllő which exchanges energy saving light bulbs if they go wrong within one year after purchase.
After these issues we talked about Earth Day, because Dalkia Energy is supporting us in organizing an event on the 21st of April 2012 in Gödöllő in the House of Arts and we will also have outdoor programs. We plan on giving presentations to households, to families and to communities, having interactive corners and a lot of fun. We would like to provide places and possibilities for organisations to introduce themselves so we will organize a meeting in February/March with potential participants.
We talked about bicycling: there will be a procession on the 15th March! The Gödöllő Bicycle Club plans to teach novice bikers to cycle better around the city. The municipality of Gödöllő gave 20 Million forints to promote more convenient cycling in Gödöllő. The first arrangement will be building bicycle storage units at busy points of the city. Later, they plan on building alternative routes for cyclists and they would like to educate drivers J
The date of our next club meeting will probably be on 27th February 2012 when we visit a local compost heating system.
Other important dates:
§ 10th February: interim event of the Energy Neighbourhoods project.
§ 24th March: plant and seed swapping, garage sale of the Regina Foundation
§ 21st April: Earth Day program about energy saving for families.
We wish a warm welcome to our new members and we hope old members will keep up their participation in the club!