A great market day for the launch of The Stroud Pound

This Saturday the weather was lovely and Stroud’s amazing weekly Farmers Market was heaving – so much going on, what with the harvest season being in full swing and the apple season just ramping up, and it was Stroud Food Week or something like that.

Stroud really is an amazing place, filled with so many amazing and committed people. Saturday saw the launch of the Stroud Pound, an alternative currency for use in Stroud. I received my first gratis pound, and will be joining the co-op (cost £5) and then buying some local notes soon, for use in places like the Stroud Bookshop and Star Anise Café.

Its an exciting thought that we might be keeping even more local money in the local economy through this – people already buy a lot of local produce here in the Stroud Valleys – the Chiemgauer from Bavarian is well established and has €3 million worth of currency in circulation. What is fascinating is that this money is spent much more than Euros, in the sense that it changes hands much more. Local currencies like this devalue over time, so there’s no gain to saving it.

Stroud also had a repeat of its Open Homes initiative to open up eco-friendly / renovated houses to the public over the weekend. I visited a couple to find out about rainwater harvesting, solar heating and some insulation challenges. I also found out unexpected things along the way, eg that you lose more heat through the mortar in joints in conventional walls than you do through the blocks (per % area or in total I don’t know) so a green new-build used very thin mortaring between blocks to combat this.

UPDATE: Found Philip Booth’s blog article on the Stroud Pound launch, with pictures