The following is from Clare Mahdiyone, chief executive of the Stroud Valleys Project's, column from this week's SNJ (Dec 5).

It is really good that the leaders of Stroud District Council’s cooperative alliance have issued a joint statement declaring a climate emergency.

This follows the recent IPCC report which warned that we only have 12 years to take emergency action in order to prevent global warming greater than 1.5°C.

The sense of urgency has also been expressed by Extinction Rebellion, a growing group of environmental activists who are helping to raise awareness of this issue.

As individuals we can all make changes like using the car less and cycling or walking instead, changing to green energy suppliers, and reusing and recycling as much as possible.

With the festive season approaching, think about having a greener Christmas.

At SVP we are working to support our community to do their bit.

As a result we are increasing our range of refills so as well as laundry liquid, washing up liquid, fabric conditioner, liquid hand soap and multi-purpose sprays we are stocking shampoo , conditioner and toilet cleaner refills. We have also increased the range of recycling we can accept - so we are now taking biscuit and cake wrappers, plastic toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes and their packaging, cleaned plastic pet dry food bags together with wet pet food pouches, together with mobile phones, print cartridges, jewellery, old money and games consoles.

We have also joined the refill scheme set up by Stroud Valleys Action on Plastic. The aim is to reduce plastic pollution at source by making it easier for people to reuse and refill their bottle with free tap water on the go. We are selling their metal water bottles, as in the photo.