Blog to what extent your ward/SOA resembles a 'sustainable community' and what extent you don't think it does.

I've lived in Northampton all my life and to be honest did not take any notice whether my community was sustainable or not until I started to take this module. I remember my parents telling me to 'always put my rubbish in the bin' and at my lower school we would take part in 'litter picking', I wasn't aware that we were actively being sustainable, I was just interested in the treat promised to us when we were done! However as I got older the government got tougher on the appearance of the cities and towns in England. it was encouraged that it was important to Keep Britain Tidy and was enforced by fines for dropping chewing gum and cigarettes butts on the ground. The government said that the money raise from the fines would be used to buy more bins and help rise awareness to the public.
I have notice a differences in the town's appearance but on the other hand have notice the amount of bins that are made from metal and plastic, which I think is unnecessary and and a bit of a contradiction if the country's wants to be Eco friendly. Some may not agree but I think there is a lot of motorized traffic in Northampton town compared to the villages around it. we have a lot of schools, a university and people who still have a job! The county council of Northampton don't really push the idea of alternatives ways of sustainable transport from what I've seen but do really concentrate on the idea of recycling rubbish, old clothes and reducing the amount of the litter in the town.
As I have mentioned before, Northampton has a University. This intuition has to cater for a huge amount of student and staff that need to use electrical resources to teach, learn and live among other things. Just imagining the amount of the University's electrical usage especially by students that live on campus does not give the impression that Northampton is not such a sustainable community.
The sustainable community spirit in Northampton I think, has be generated from the media, news and schools that have recently started to teach students about it. The Northampton's Super Output Area 2007 statistics, shows the domestic comsumption of electric was 3,697 and of gas was 16,307. From then till now I do think the number in comsumption would have increased with a growing population of 202,800 despite the promotion of being Eco-friendly in Northampton.