Strachan House quizzers beat the Auld Enemy in Earth Day battle!

Residents and guests at Strachan House care home in Blackhall enjoyed a morning of quizzing and a classic English High tea as they hosted a virtual quiz with Goodson Lodge care centre in Trowbridge.

Residents in the Goodson Lodge Care centre were treated to irn bru, whisky and shortbread as both teams battled it out to see who would be crowned quiz master champion. 

Teams from both the English and Scottish homes provided quiz questions about their country whilst the other side aimed to guess the answers with mouthfuls of their countries’ finest fare.

General Manager, Fran Fisher said, Our residents had a wonderful morning and were really excited to meet new people and learn lots of amazing new things.

“It’s always great to connect with others in the care industry and we hope we can continue for many years to come”. 

The quiz held on Earth Day was a true celebration of community and coming together. The Scottish team took the win this year but, with this now being an annual event, we will see if the English team can make it a draw next year! 

Strachan House care home is run by Barchester Healthcare, one of the UK’s largest care providers, which is committed to delivering personalised care across its care homes and hospitals. 

Strachan House provides Nursing and Dementia care  for 83 residents from respite care to long term stays.

Kimpton Charlotte Square celebrates Earth Day with Plant Pal programme

Kimpton Charlotte Square is honouring the annual World Earth Day (22 April) with a new ‘Plant Pals’ initiative. 

The five-star hotel will offer locally sourced plants for guests to enjoy in-room upon request. The complimentary offering is available for all guests and can be arranged at any point prior or during the stay, simply book via the website or request from the front of house team at the hotel.

With the plants named after Scottish philanthropist, Mary Erskpine (Erskine) and one of the first women to graduate from the University of Edinburgh, Flora Philip, guests are invited to immerse in nature and bask in the atmosphere of female empowerment.

What’s more, for every Plant Pal request at the hotel, Kimpton Charlotte Square will in return plant a tree on behalf of the guest through its rewilding charity partner, Trees for Life – as part of its commitment to protect nature against climate change.

Studies have shown that plants have the ability to boost your mood and increase productivity, so this is the perfect in-room addition for those celebrating a special occasion, visiting for work, or touring the city. 

Kimpton Charlotte Square also invites non-hotel guests to try remote working in The Garden, an indoor courtyard space, where they can feel a sense of calm among the greenery and natural light as they utilise the space for a ‘WFH’ day.

Plant Pals joins a host of other thoughtful programs and wellness perks at Kimpton Charlotte Square, including yoga mats available in every room and complimentary Kimpton bikes to explore the city. Guests can also relax and recharge in the hotel’s luxurious spa.

Guests looking for the ultimate relaxing spring escape can enjoy the hotel’s All You Can Suite package, which includes an eclectic dining experience at the hotel’s destination restaurant, BABA, and a night stay in a signature suites, alongside complimentary bath salts & invigorating body oil from Scottish skincare brand, Ishga.

To book Plant Pals or add it to the All You Can Suite package, visit kimptoncharlottesquare.com. Standard Double rooms start from £220.

Find out more: https://www.kimptoncharlottesquare.com/plant-pals

Plant and Share Month returns to help people grow together

The nationwide campaign run by the Soil Association’s Food for Life Get Togethers programme will be bringing people together again for its third year between 22nd April – 20th May.

Plant and Share Month is a celebration of growing and community, rooted in the experience of sowing, planting and sharing. The event continues to grow each year: in 2022 over 500 registered activities took place, and bespoke resources were downloaded over 23,000 times.

Kicking off on Earth Day – Saturday 22nd April and concluding on World Bee Day – Saturday 20th May, it is completely free to register and includes access to a vast selection of free resources, toolkits and event planning tips.  

Adam Carter, Senior Programme Manager, Food for Life Get Togethers says: “We couldn’t be more inspired seeing just how many people have come together over the last three years of Plant and Share.

“Whether it’s community groups building urban gardens, schools planting vegetables to incorporate in healthy school meals or people growing something for the first time, it’s been a real joy to help get boots on the ground.

“Launching in 2021 mid-pandemic was challenging, but seeing it evolve from neighbours sharing seedlings over garden walls to entire communities meeting up in the gardens they’ve grown together has been heart-warming – we can’t wait to see what participants get up to this year.”

For additional inspiration, Plant and Share month will have themed weeks to help inspire everyone with the sheer variety of reasons it’s good to grow. The themes are: Growing for All, Growing to Eat, Growing for Joy and Growing for Nature.

Free resources will be released via the newsletter and available on the Food for Life Get Together’s website from 22nd March and will cover activities such as growing fresh herbs to attract pollinators, companion planting beautiful flowers, ‘grow your own soup’, and learning about which plants can attract bug life to the garden. With Plant and Share Month’s fun, engaging and free resources, all of this and more is possible to help people get rooted in nature.

There are plenty of other reasons to celebrate throughout the month too, including the return of Food for Life’s Grandparent Gardening Week, intergenerational activities and the Coronation which will include campaign partner the Eden Project’s Big Lunch, both great opportunities to start growing and sharing skills with friends, family and the whole community.

How can people take part?

People can take part by starting an event either with friends, family or within their local community and registering it on our website, or by joining an existing event in their local area. Reach out to local community groups to see if there’s an event happening nearby, or help to arrange one with them.

If you’re interested in covering an event local to you, please let us know and we can help with finding out event details.

Help to restore our planet on Earth Day

EARTH DAY: 20 – 22 April

Activists like Greta Thunberg are joining this year’s 48 hours of global action. And as former primary school teacher ABBY MILNES of education resource experts PlanBee shows, even the youngest children can get into the spirit of the day with simple activities near to home:

A whopping 70 percent of teachers said say they don’t feel they have been properly trained to teach about climate change, with 40 percent saying it was rarely even mentioned in their school, according to a recent poll by TeacherTapp.

So, it’s all the more important that we can join the movement to educate ourselves, and our children, on the need to protect the global environment.

What is Earth Day?

Earth Day provides a way for us all to demonstrate support for environmental protection and to teach each other about environmental issues.

It was first held in 1970 in the US and has now grown to international dimensions, with events across the globe.

These aim to encourage people to come together and join the world leaders to discuss what we can do to prevent the potential disasters which could result result from climate change.

They include a global youth summit which consisting of panels, speeches and discussions featuring today’s youth climate activists, including Greta Thunberg.

This year’s theme is ‘Restore Our Earth’.

Small cute girl wearing protective mask and holding model planet Earth with message save me

April 21st will focus on the education of children in schools and the crucial role that educators play in ensuring that future generations have a good knowledge of what climate change is, and the steps that can be taken to combat its effects.

On the 22nd there will be a global climate summit with workshops, panels and performances on topics such as:

●        Climate and environmental literacy

●        Climate restoration technologies

●        Reforestation efforts

●        Regenerative agriculture

●        Equity and environmental justice

●        Citizen science

●        Cleanups, and more.

Why join in?

Earth Day offers everyone, young and old, a chance to join together in a common cause: to make changes to combat the effects of and reduce further climate change. It is the perfect opportunity to help to educate the younger generations on steps we can all take to help our environment in the short term, as well as changes we can make to our lifestyles to make changes in the long run.

How can I join in?

Your Earth Day activities can be as large or as small as you want them to be:

Take a walk

This is something everyone can participate in, no matter their age. Take a walk around your local area and take note of all the different animals, insects and plants you can spot. How many different kinds can you spot?

You may like to use these free identification charts for birds to help you.

Or create a scavenger hunt for each other, you could use these I Spy Outdoor Challenge Cards as a starting point.

Encourage younger children to identify where plants are growing, and where they are more likely to find insects – for example, under logs, stones or dark damp spots.

Older children may be encouraged to think about the food chains that they can see. What does a caterpillar eat? Does anything then eat the caterpillar?

This could lead into discussions about biodiversity and what may happen if you took away a food source such as leaves and grass. What would happen to the caterpillars, and their predators?

Clean-ups

One of the main focus of this year’s Earth Day activities is cleaning up our environment to make sure waste ends up in the right place.

Recycling is becoming easier and easier to do and commonplace in the UK, but there are still some areas that end up covered in litter.

Why not take a look around on your walk and do your bit to clear up litter?

Most councils will have litter-picking equipment available to book out to use in a litter pick. Why not organise some of your local community to help?

Or think even bigger and tackle a larger area such as a local park or beach. You can even register your cleanup on the Earth Day website!

Meat-free Mondays

Everyone has a ‘foodprint’. This is the environmental impacts that are associated with growing, transporting, storing of and producing our foods. 

While vegetarian and vegan diets can help reduce your foodprint, you don’t have to give up your favourite foods for good. How about having a meat-free day?

Learn new ways to cook meals with meat replacements, or just tasty ways to cook vegetables in different ways!

Do a taste test with your children. Do they prefer roasted, steamed or boiled carrots? Try new fruits for dessert and have your children help you prepare them. Life skills and new experiences in the same move!

Gardening

Create a garden together. Whether it is a window box, a vegetable patch or just a single herb plant, teach your children how to care for a plant and keep it healthy. E

ven better if you get to use the fruits (and/or vegetables) of your labour in a new recipe!

Save energy and water

Ask your children think about the energy and water being used at school and at home. How can we make sure we don’t waste energy and water unnecessarily?

Challenge the children to create posters to put up around the area to remind users to turn off lights or the tap when they aren’t’t being used.

Our Waters Scarcity lessons may be a suitable resource for this!

PlanBee is passionate about creating age-appropriate resources to help primary school teachers, and parents feel confident when educating children about climate change. 

Their carefully designed ESR (Education for Social Responsibility) curriculum challenges children aged five to 11 to explore what climate change is and how it can affect not only humans but the world around us.

Earthday.org has a bank of educational resources to use with children of all ages to contribute to and learn about the environment around them.

Click here to find out the other areas our ESR curriculum cover.

Earth day, coronoavirus and the case for a new normal

Today marks the 50th year of Earth Day.  None of the previous 49 Earth Days have taken place in anything like the world we are experiencing today (writes TERRY A’HEARN, Chief Executive, Scottish Environment Protection Agency).

It’s difficult to think that it was only seven weeks ago, on the 2nd of March, that Scotland reported its first case of coronavirus.

Our world has changed dramatically in that short period.  Our assumptions about what is ‘normal’ in our daily lives have fundamentally changed.  Many of our personal, family, community and organisational routines have been dramatically altered to help us get through this emergency.

This unprecedented scale of change has been achieved quickly and with clear purpose: to tackle a public health emergency and minimise, as far as we can, the awful human tragedy and suffering brought on by the coronavirus.

As we make this community effort, there is one old assumption which we must absolutely not return to.  This is the long-held and outdated thought that looking after the environment is in conflict with economic success.

Scotland has already made strong progress in discarding this old mindset with a track record, for example, in reducing carbon emissions by creating the new industries of tomorrow such as renewable energy.

Scotland, along with Iceland and New Zealand, established the Wellbeing Economy Governments Initiative in 2018.  It is these types of innovation that will help us create vibrant economies that will serve our human needs and are in sync with what our one and only earth can provide.

As Scotland’s environmental watchdog, we have kept this long-term vision in mind as we work out how to play our own specific role in the national effort to tackle the current public health emergency.

We have set our aim as making our “best contribution to helping the nation get through this public health emergency in a way that protects and improves Scotland’s environment”.

What does this mean for how we do our job?

The Scottish Government has designated 13 critical national infrastructure sectors vital to the functioning of society during this emergency. At SEPA, we regulate the environmental impact of many of these sectors.  We are working closely with these sectors to help this national focus on food security, the provision of clean water and the maintenance of critical infrastructure and the support services on which we all rely.

We know that all businesses we regulate are trying to operate in extraordinary circumstances.  We know they are trying to look after the health of their own workforces. We know they may have supply-chain and other challenges.

On 6th April, we published our regulatory philosophy for this next period, a new Coronavirus website, information and a series of ‘regulatory positions’ which support specific sectors over the period ahead.  We’ll add more over the coming weeks.

We said that where regulated businesses are unable to fully meet their compliance obligations, they should prioritise conditions which directly protect the environment over those of an administrative nature.  They should contact SEPA, work closely with us and document the choices and actions they take.

We’ve asked Scottish businesses to adapt responsibly and we expect the majority will.  Our message has been clear: if you try to do the right thing in this next period, you will find a helpful and supportive regulator.  If you deliberately do the wrong thing while the rest of Scottish society pulls together, you’ll get the uncompromising regulator your behaviour deserves.

This approach of supporting progressive business behaviour and punishing poor business behaviour has been central to our regulatory strategy: One Planet Prosperity.   The challenge of how we help Scottish businesses and communities thrive within the resources that our one planet provides is more important now than ever.

In the current period, we’re all looking at how companies are responding.  We’re seeing the very best in innovation, as companies such as North British Distillery in Edinburgh are supplying high strength alcohol to produce hand sanitiser.

International spirits firm Edrington, behind names like The Macallan, Highland Park, The Glenrothes and The Famous Grouse blended Scotch is supporting Glasgow City Council’s production of sanitiser for care homes and front-line staff, such as waste and recycling workers, through ongoing donations of high strength alcohol from North British. Last week Edrington also donated hand sanitiser to The Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre.

Similar to most Scottish employers still able to operate, we have had to adapt in order to protect our workforce and help reduce the spread of the virus.

We will continue to use a variety of means of checking and assessing compliance, including phone calls, issuing written advice, remotely managed technologies such as drones, targeted site and field visits, and other forms of intelligence gathering.

Even some businesses which, unfortunately, have had to, or are considering, pausing production are already opening discussions with us about how they might reduce environmental impact when they restart their economic activity.

In 1994, business sustainability leader John Elkington coined the phrase the ‘triple bottom line’ of people, planet and profit.  Despite it entering the business lexicon, twenty-five years later Elkington wrote an article in Harvard Business Review announcing a ‘product recall’ of his triple bottom line concept.

The concept had become popular.  It had helped bring environmental and social issues into boardroom deliberations.  It sparked a series of actions by many businesses to improve their environmental performance and contribute to enhanced social outcomes.

Elkington had hoped it would help fundamentally change our economies.  It helped us step forward, but not jump ahead.  It led to improvements, but not transformation.  Elkington had that rare vision to call time on an idea that had been successful, but needed replacing by something new.

Last year, Elkington and his team at Volans launched its ‘Tomorrow’s Capitalism’ inquiry.  Alongside global companies such as Unilever, Aviva Investors, Covestro and The Body Shop, SEPA is participating as the only regulatory agency invited to join the project.

We are bringing some of Scotland’s innovation into the project and learning with others as we debate and, importantly, test practical ways of creating the future economy and society that will serve us all well.

Last week, the Scottish Government announced an Economic Recovery Action Group.  In doing so, the First Minster said “its role will be to advise government on actions to support economic recovery.  And crucially it will consider how these actions can contribute to our aim of building a fairer, and a greener, and a more equal society as well.”  SEPA will contribute our ideas from our One Planet Prosperity work with our partners in Scotland and from our participation in Volans’ Tomorrow’s Capitalism inquiry.

As we take a moment to reflect on this 50th Earth Day, it’s clear that the next period can’t be an alibi for inaction.  The future is not what it was going to be.  As Scotland’s environmental regulator, we will maintain our twin focus: regulating in a way that helps Scotland get through this public health emergency and regulating in a way that helps builds an even better, more inclusive and sustainable Scotland.

Earth Day: UK government supports global action to fight illegal wildlife trade

There has been progress in key areas in the six months since the UK government staged the largest-ever Illegal Wildlife Trade conference in October 2018 including the launch of education packs. Continue reading Earth Day: UK government supports global action to fight illegal wildlife trade

Celebrate Earth Day with Wardie Bay Beachwatch

Dear All,

Looking forward to seeing many of you on Sunday 12:30 sharp for our next MCS Beachwatch survey and beach clean to celebrate Earth Day.
I attach results from last time (see below). It was even worse than the same time last year. The Beast from the East brought rather a lot of litter on the angry waves, and 35.1% sewage again. We really need this to be sorted in the 21st Century, unless we’re happy with the sea being one almighty toilet.
On Sunday, there will be opportunity to go for drinks afterwards in Leith at various venues to catch up with the whole Changeworks, Zero Waste Leith, Leither’s Don’t Litter main event.
Please come to us, or join any event in Leith. Our fabulous Anna L-C from Boda Bars will be plogging the shoreline between Leith and Wardie Beach. All details of events are here in the Zero Waste Leith Overview: Earth Day Community Clear Ups.
See you Sunday! Gloves and litter picking equipment provided but please bring kids gloves if you have them.
Best wishes
Karen
… and please check out facebook and twitter for updates, pics and shares.

Wardie Bay Beachwatch

email: wardiebaybeachwatch@gmail.com
facebook: @WardieBayBeachwatch
twitter: @wardiebaybeach
MCS website: Wardie Bay Beach