My radio piece on the Bristol Pound for DW's Living Planet - finally on air!
I've been working on this since February 
:)
Thanks to St Werburgh City Farm and Grow Bristol for our interviews.
ENVIRONMENT
Living Planet: How green and efficient is a local currency?
The Bristol Pound, launched back in 2012, has become the UK's largest local currency. It was thought up by members of the local Green Party, worried about the proliferation of chain stores in their city. The idea was to promote community life and small, independent, green businesses. So how does it work and how efficient is it?
To listen:
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To read:
Launched in 2012, the Bristol Pound (£B) is the UK’s largest local currency. Imagined by members of the local Green Party, worried about the proliferation of chain stores in their city, its goal was to promote community life and small, independent, green businesses.
So how does it work and how efficient is it?
Melissa Chemam reports from Bristol.
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St Werburgh, Bristol, a neighbourhood known for its city farm and independent shops. I’m talking with customers at Better Food, an organic store, discussing the utility of the local currency, the Bristol Pound, set up in 2012 to encourage local consumption.
Journalist: Do you use the Bristol Pound?
Man: No… I don’t.
Journalist: Never? You know what it’s for?
Man: Yeah, local businesses, but I’ve never looked into it.
Journalist: And you…?
Woman: Yes, I use it a lot, and where I work we use it as well, at the café on the city farm…
Journalist: Why do you think it’s a good think?
Woman: “If you think about economics, you keep money in an area, it ends up increasing in its value, it’s circulating in one area. So to me it makes complete sense and it supports independent businesses”.
At the Farm, the Bristol pound is indeed a key tool.
Sarah Flint works at the Farm. Here local residents have come to grow organic vegetables, in small allotments, independently, since the 1970s.
Sarah Flint, Training Manager at the Farm
Sarah: “We grow vegetables, which we then sell to a couple of local outlets, the café here and also the restaurant down the road. It’s not a huge amount but it means there’s a production going on here.”
Journalist: “Wow, so what they grow here with you during the training, you can sell it directly…”
Sarah: “Absolutely…”
Journalist: “to people living in the neighbourhood.”
Sarah: “Yes, just down the road we’ve got a community garden. And the other things we have all through the farm are of course the animals. We can see the chicken, we collect the eggs and you can buy them from our office. In the paddock, usually we have the goats and sheep in. And this is also where we have a festival every year to fundraise to help us paying for the outgoing for the animals”.
Here, the Bristol Pound is used every day, to sell to products directly, as well as in the café.
Sarah: “Personally I use the Bristol Pound and I used to work for another organisation where we had a lot of other services to sell and it was used extensively there. It’s one of those things that’s growing and growing and it certainly has made people think ‘I’ve got this money, I’m going to spend locally’. And it’s so important to get that locality idea. People now understand they have that choice, which I don’t think they understood before.”
Journalist: “The production here is organic and self-conscious about pollution, about what is produced, and about the quality…”
Sarah: “Yes, absolutely. It’s that thing about people already out there wanting to grow vegetables, and let’s encourage them, make it easy for them, otherwise they will give up.”
Leaving the farm, I’ve walked on Gloucester Road, one of the UK’s longest streets of independent shops. Most of them accept the Bristol Pound. But many people tell me they don’t use it…
Carlotta and Fatima, local residents:
-“I’m aware of it but I’ve never used it…”
-‘It’s something I thought about but sometimes you’re busy with your life, so you don’t do it.”
-“Also you have to think about where you going to find it, so I think that’s why people are not using it that much.”
Other customers are more aware of the goal of the currency, like Laura, who comes every day to Café Kino, a vegan restaurant on Stokes Croft.
Laura, regular customer at Café Kino:
“I use the Bristol Pound because I believe in money as a tool and not an end in its own right. And I buy locally anyway. It keeps the money generated in the city inside the city, rather that to see it bolster to multinationals…”
The goal of the Bristol Pound is to avoid importing what doesn’t need to come from far away. It can be used in cash, online on the websites of hundreds of local independent businesses in Bristol, in the transports, in restaurants, or with your mobile phone with a text payment.
Some places use it daily like The Canteen, where I met with Ciaran Murphy, chief executive at the Bristol Pound…
Ciaran Murphy:
“One of the important things to remember about creating a green society is how economic structures work. And so you have to change the structures if you want to change people’s behaviour. And one of the main things that affect people’s behaviour is money and the way it’s spent, obviously. For example, if you want to localise supply of food more, or other products, rather than using energy to transport them from all over the world, then you need to find ways to making that happen and you need a systemic intervention, which works through the economy, across different sectors. And that’s one of the reason the Bristol Pound was born.”
In the same building, I also met with Dermot O’Regan, the CEO of Grow Bristol, which works in urban ultra-local farming, in containers and small spaces. He values the Bristol Pound for the ideas it helps spreading.
Dermot O’Regan, Grow Bristol:
“We were registered with the Bristol Pound from the beginning, in 2016. Some of our customers used the Bristol Pound, some didn’t because they didn’t use it as much. But what we found the most beneficial for us was that promotion of somand and local businesses and buying local. So it’s very good at producing a guide every year where you can use the Bristol Pounds, and they featured us in some of their blogs. So I think, as powerful as the currency is, even where it’s not necessarily used so much, as in our business – for example we would have to buy our seeds from a couple of companies outside Bristol that wouldn’t take the Bristol Pound, however the strength of it for us has been the network for local businesses and promoting local business. I think it’s very useful in that sense as well.”
The Local Pound helped Bristol become European Green Capital, in 2015.A few other cities in the world have their own local currency like Baltimore, in the USA. Now others in the UK, are putting in place their own like Glasgow and Liverpool.
Melissa Chemam, Bristol, DW.
