CRAG Census

david

website team CRAGger Sevenoaks

Yes, I think it’s important to distinguish which groups are not yet active and separate these off from the main groups list. Perhaps a group should only be listed once it has had its first meeting (or should there be some other criteria?).

A forum calendar is in the next website version.

I have done a quick count through the number of subscribers to this forum and the local CRAG pages and found the following:

CRAGs forum 105 subscribers (of which 60 are also subscribed to a local group)

Wokingham** 11
Islington** 9
Leeds* 5
Glasgow* 5
Worcestershire 5
Hereford** 4
Leamington** 4
Redland 4
Oxford** 2
Sevenoaks 2
Brighton 2
Chiswick 2
Clapham** 1
Langport 1
Stroud 1
Leicester 1
Cotswold 1

• means this CRAG is fully operational

• means this CRAG has had at least one meeting but has yet to agree on a CO2 target and penalty

There have also been expressions of interest in starting CRAGs in York, Dublin and France.

Not all CRAGgers are subscribed to this site. I would estimate that as many as 50% of us are happy to remain off-line. This would suggest the community has passed the 100 mark.

Please feel free to add to this info if you know more about your local CRAG.

See also the “who are we?” thread on Glasgow CRAG page for another diy census idea.

best wishes

andy

david

website team CRAGger Sevenoaks

I have started a CRAG Census spreadsheet to compile all the relevant CRAGs data. We should be getting 2006 footprints in around now, so it might be a good time to have a ring round.

These fields could form the basis of the website group carbon data – are they the right ones, and are any missing?

Very soon a number of CRAGs will be completing their 1st or even 2nd Carbon Year. Trawling through the website, I have discovered how the first five CRAGs managed in their respective Year 1’s and I have added this to the CRAGs chronology wiki page.

http://www.carbonrationing.org.uk/wiki/crags-chronology

31 Dec 07
Glasgow CRAG completes its 1st carbon year
16 CRAGgers (including 4 dependents) – total 41.6tCO2 – average 2.6tCO2 compared to 4.5tCO2 ration – carbon fund of £55 to be distributed amongst carbon savers.

30 Nov 07
Islington CRAG completes its 1st carbon year.
12 CRAGgers – total 33.2tCO2 – average 2.77tCO2 compared to 4.05tCO2 ration – carbon fund distributed to carbon savers.

31 Mar 07
Hereford CRAG finishes its 1st carbon year.
13 CRAGgers (including 1 dependent) – total 42.6tCO2 – average 3.28tCO2 compared to 4.5tCO2 ration – no carbon fund.

31 Mar 07
Leamington CRAG finishes its 1st carbon year.
16 CRAGgers (including 6 dependents) – total 53.1tCO2 – average 3.32tCO2 compared to 4.5tCO2 ration – carbon fund of £222 donated to Practical Action.

31 Dec 06
Oxford CRAG complete their 1st carbon year.
5 CRAGgers – total 33.7tCO2 – average 6.74tCO2 compared to 5tCO2 ration – carbon fund spent on Climate Care offsets.

copied from the new groups thread. david.

From a questionnaire sent out to all CRAG admins over the summer (of 2007. david.), our best current estimate is as follows:

There are 14 active CRAGs (all in the UK) with a total population of at least 182 CRAGgers. [Note that this figure includes 49 brave WSP employees taking part in their PACT scheme – possibly the first company sponsored personal carbon allowance initiative – who may or may not consider themselves as CRAGgers!]

There are a further ten CRAGs in a more or less advanced stage of formation – three of which are in the US. These have a population of at least 52.

All the data that I have received are set out at the end of this message. You will see a number of “tbc“s(i.e. “to be confirmed”). If you can confirm any of them, please do so!

General feedback from the CRAGs included the following comments:

“The member sign-up is complicated for new people – right now on the sign-up form the only CRAG people can join is Islington. I don’t know if this is intentional. Is there a way to have someone click a box for a group and have it notify the site admin to contact the person to see if they are really interested?”

“The only thing that people struggle with is getting the hang of the website, mainly because we have our own yahoo group and public website so the crag only gets visited infrequently and people forget their usernames and passwords, and how to comment or reply etc etc.”

“An informal point that’s been made several times is whether ‘CRAG’ is the right acronym. This may sound daft, but it doesn’t take much of a leap to change one key letter, so we’ll probably go for a different acronym on launch. Do you have any experience from other schemes?”

“Some advice on motivating people and pinning them down to a meeting and recruiting new members would be useful.”

“I think we could do with a starter pack of resources, howto guides for
banners, cards, posters availablefor new groups. A mentoring system
would probably be good too.”

CRAG name – status – number of members – carbon year or first meeting – allowance – cost of carbon debt – other

Islington – active – 10 – 01/12/06 to 30/11/07 – 4050kg – 5p/kg – 6 monthly carbon settlement
Oxford – active – tbc – 01/01/07 to 31/12/07 – tbc – tbc
Glasgow – active – 12 – 01/01/07 to 31/12/07 – 4500kg – 0p/kg or 7p/kg – counting long-haul train and bus
Birmingham – active – 15 – 01/01/07 to 31/12/07 – 4500kg – 0p/kg in year 1 – counting significant non-commuting train and bus journeys
Wokingham – active – tbc – 01/01/07 to 31/12/07 – 4500kg – 2p/kg
Surrey Green Party – active – 7 – 01/01/07 to 31/12/07 – 4000kg – 10p/kg
Langport – active – 7 – 01/04/07 to 31/03/08 – 8400kg – 2p/kg – £100 maximum
Hereford – active – 12 – 01/04/07 to 31/03/08 – 4000kg – 0p/kg but possible labour swaps! – counting public transport > 30 miles
Redland – active – 15 – 01/04/07 to 31/03/08 – 4500kg – 4p/kg or 8hrs work per tonne – £100 maximum
Sevenoaks – active – 9 – 01/04/07 to 31/03/08 – 5000kg average – 4p/kg with proceeds going to charitable offsets
Leeds – active – 25 – 01/04/07 to 31/03/08 – individually set – individually set
York – active – 10 – 01/06/07 to 31/05/08 – 4500kg – penalty not decided – food being considered
WSP – active – 49 – 01/10/07 to 30/09/08 – 6000kg – maximum payment or receipt of £100
Leicester – active – 5 – 01/09/07 to 31/08/08 – 4500kg – 4p/kg penalty – counting public transport
Maryland, USA – active – 4 – 01/12/07

Stratford – start-up – 10 – first met in July 07

North Herefordshire – start-up – 10 – meeting in Sept 07
Stroud – start-up – 10 – meeting on 19/09/07

East Kent – start-up – 4 – hoping to start 01/10/07

Peckham – start-up – 3 – meeting on 16/10/07
Exeter – start-up – 3 – hoping to start 01/04/08

Columbia Gorge, USA – start-up – 1 – meeting tbc
Atlanta, USA – start-up – 5 – meeting tbc
Tower Hamlets – start-up – 2 – meeting tbc

Leamington – dormant – original membership dispersed to other groups

david

website team CRAGger Sevenoaks

Well, here are the first results from the CRAG experiment.

Well done, everyone, it’s a brilliant effort to see such a large reduction in the first year (62 members in 5 groups: 29% since joining, on average; 39% from the UK average). We’ve shown it can be done, and that the framework is helping us to do it!

We’re well ahead of the tightening in our allowances (which where 16% below the UK average in yr1), so most of us shouldn’t be feeling the pinch of our incentives (whether financial, virtual or chores) too badly. The starting footprints were below the UK average (by 12%), but not as much as you’d imagine, given that we’ve really been geared up to recruiting green-minded people, in the main.

Note that, because only one-third of members recorded their starting footprints, I’ve assumed this is representative of the whole bunch. If anyone else can dig these out (esp. in Islington), it will help to improve the quality of the dataset.

See UK CRAGs Census for more details.

Hurrah!