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Golden Valley Environment Group Ty-Mawr's Green Shoots
Golden Valley Environment Group members were enthralled as the saga of 'Ty-Mawr' Lime unfolded at their February meeting. Co- founders Joyce and Nigel Gervis said that their dream had been the restoration and development of a derelict property sited across Llangorse Lake from Joyce's childhood home. They purchased Ty-Mawr in 1993, and soon started manufacturing materials required for the environmentally friendly restoration work, leading to the formation of Ty-Mawr Lime two years later. Ty-Mawr is now the headquarters and training centre for a £2million business employing some 20 local people. Their products blend old and new techniques. For instance, 'glaster', which is a mix of lime and recycled glass aggregate, is used as a render, screed, or mortar, and recycled foamed glass is an insulating underlay to floor slabs. Readily available recycled material-glass- is utilised, and the extraction of sand correspondingly reduced, both environmentally desirable. A relatively new product, 'Thermaflleece', also uses a readily available resource-Welsh fleeces -and is now being successfully marketed as an insulation material. It has been welcomed by the Welsh Assembly, as providing a new market for Welsh sheep farmers, some 75% of the quilt being Welsh wool! Joyce said that the movement towards more environmentally friendly building products is where the organic food movement was 15 years ago, but as the couple ran courses for 800 delegates last year, the message is reaching far and wide-they even had a delegate from Seattle recently! The company has now opened a new distribution warehouse on the fringes of Brecon, and markets a wide range of environmentally friendly building products from lime plasters to paint. Bob Hinton, summing up for GVEG, expressed the members thanks for an inspirational and thought provoking talk, which highlighted a successful environmental way forward despite the current mood of doom and gloom. Minutes prepared by Alan Picton, 22 February 2009 Click here to return to top of this page.
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