Ahead of Open Farm Sunday’s 20 anniversary, new research by organisers, LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming), reveals deep-rooted public support for farmers who produce food while protecting nature.
Families across the country have the chance to visit one of over 250 farms taking part in Open Farm Sunday on 7 June, to discover the world of farming, make new connections and explore the vital links between food production, farming and nature.
The survey of more than 2,000 people found that 93% believe it is important for the UK to maintain a strong level of food production capacity in an increasingly uncertain world.
At the same time, 89% agreed that protecting nature on farms, including healthy soils, flood defences and biodiversity, is essential for long-term food production, while 71% said farmers should focus on producing food while also protecting nature.
The findings highlight the importance of helping people see, first-hand, what sustainable farming looks like beyond the supermarket shelf. On Open Farm Sunday, farms of different sizes and sectors open their gates, giving visitors the chance to ask questions and discover how wildlife, soils, water, technology and food production are all connected.
Annabel Shackleton, Open Farm Sunday Event Manager, said: “Open Farm Sunday is a wonderful day of discovery. Families can immerse themselves in a world they don’t usually see.
“It’s an opportunity to see sustainable farming in action, not as an idea on a label, but as something real, practical and happening every day. This research shows people care deeply about food security and about nature, and farmers are working hard to deliver both.
“For 20 years, Open Farm Sunday has helped build trust and connection between the public and farming. This anniversary year is a wonderful opportunity for children and adults alike to engage with farming in an interactive, fun and inspiring way while seeing how their everyday food choices can help support a more sustainable future.”
Open Farm Sunday is one of the farming industry’s leading public engagement programmes. It offers a unique opportunity for visitors to meet farmers face-to-face, get up close to machinery, livestock and crops, and learn how farmers care for the land, take pride in their work, and use bright ideas to grow good food.
This year’s campaign encourages people to turn food labels into lived experiences by visiting a farm, meeting farming champions and discovering how nature and innovation work together.
A day after World No Tobacco Day, and a full year after the ban on selling single-use vapes in Scotland came into force, environmental and health organisations and campaigners are calling for further action to protect people and our environment.
While a positive decrease in littered vapes has been recorded in Scotland, alongside a 9% decrease across the UK, there is little data available to identify whether the ban has helped reduce youth vaping. And, the ongoing challenges of disposing of vapes safely, capturing precious resources via recycling, alongside tackling the ever present and harmful issue of smoking-related litter remains.
Climate Action Secretary Gillian Martin said: “Before taking action on disposable vapes, it was estimated that over half of disposable vapes were incorrectly disposed of each year in Scotland – creating a fire risk and littering our beautiful environment.
“These findings are a welcome demonstration of the success the single-use vape ban has had in its first year in tackling the threat they pose to our environment as well as to our public health.”
Alongside the Marine Conservation Society, health charity ASH Scotland and environmental scientist, campaigner and ambassador to our charity Laura Anderson (Young), we first liaised with Scottish Ministers to call for a ban on the sale of single-use vapes in 2022 after highlighting how vapes undermine the principles of a circular economy, cause harm to Scotland’s environment and damage people’s health.
Now a year-on from the ban the coalition is calling for further action, to build on the momentum and take further steps to address smoking-related litter and health impacts in children and young people – you can read the letter we sent to Scottish Ministers – calling for more action – below.
The coalition will continue to work collaboratively to tackle vapes and smoking related litter and build on its commitment to a cleaner, healthier Scotland.
THE LETTER READS:
Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Rural Affairs Minister for Mental Wellbeing, Public Health, Sport, Alcohol and Drugs Scottish Government St Andrew’s House Edinburgh EH1 3DG 21st May 2026
Dear Ministers,
We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your appointments as Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Rural Affairs, and Minister for Mental Wellbeing, Public Health, Sport, Alcohol and Drugs. As a coalition of organisations and individuals working to protect and improve Scotland’s environmental and public health, we look forward to working with you on tobacco and nicotine related litter.
Marking progress: disposable vapes ban anniversary
As we approach the anniversary of Scotland’s ban on single-use disposable vapes, we wanted to recognise the brilliant cross government working that led to the legislation coming into force, and the role Scotland played in pioneering the introduction of the ban
Laura Anderson (nee Young), also known as Less Waste Laura, is an environmental campaigner and a signatory to this letter. She catapulted the issue of littered single-use vapes to the forefront of public awareness in 2022. Since then, she has inspired politicians, charities and councils to take action to tackle Scotland’s fastest growing litter item.
The Marine Conservation Society, Keep Scotland Beautiful and ASH Scotland worked closely with Laura and others to raise awareness of this issue and call for the ban on both environmental and public health grounds which came into force on the 1st June 2025.
The ban has been an important step in raising awareness of, and tackling litter that pollutes our landscapes, communities and marine environment. Early indications in litter data from Keep Scotland Beautiful and the Marine Conservation Society show a decline in littered single-use vapes.
Initial Source to Sea litter data from the Marine Conservation Society demonstrates a 9% decrease in the presence of vapes across the UK.
Keep Scotland Beautiful has seen a decrease in the percentage of sites recording a presence of littered vapes – with vapes found on just 5% of Scottish sites.
As there has been no robust data about children’s use of vapes since the 2021/22 Health and Wellbeing Census, it is currently not possible to identify whether the ban on single-use vapes has been impactful in tackling youth vaping.
The ongoing challenge of smoking-related litter
Smoking-related litter — particularly cigarette butts — continues to be one of the most commonly discarded items in Scotland’s streets, green spaces and coastlines. Keep Scotland Beautiful auditors counted almost 20,000 cigarette butts nationally in 2025/2026.
Marine Conservation Society Beachwatch data from 2025 highlighted over 2000 smoking related litter items were found on Scottish beaches and Keep Scotland Beautiful found 60% of sites nationally were polluted by cigarette butts. These contain plastics and harmful chemicals that persist in the environment, pollute waterways and pose risks to wildlife.
Cigarette filters do not reduce health harm but mislead people who smoke into perceiving cigarettes to be safer and discourage attempts to quit smoking.
In the recent passing of the Tobacco and Vapes Act, which had a four nations approach, and the associated Legislative Consent Motions, we were pleased to see the extension of provisions to ban some or all cigarette filters in the future. Local authorities, communities and volunteers bear a significant burden in clearing this waste, yet prevention remains the most effective and sustainable solution.
Opportunities for further action
We believe there is a clear opportunity to build on the momentum of the single use vape ban and take further steps to address smoking-related litter.
We believe the following steps would help to achieve this:
1. Introduce an Extended Producer Responsibility scheme (EPR) for tobacco and nicotine waste not covered by market restrictions. 2. Increase awareness and tighten up the enforcement of existing Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and the Waste Batteries Regulations for producers, distributors and retailers of vapes including disposal and recycling. 3. Ban the sale and manufacture of single-use cigarette filters which offer no health benefits and exacerbate environmental damage. 4. Require businesses to report on the number of vapes (as a percentage sold) that are returned for recycling under WEEE. 5. Routinely publish robust data on children in Scotland’s use of tobacco and nicotine products.
Taking forward these measures would deliver clear environmental, social and economic benefits—supporting cleaner communities, healthier ecosystems, and reduced clean-up costs.
A shared ambition
Our organisations share a commitment to a cleaner, healthier Scotland. We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you and your officials to discuss how we can work collaboratively to tackle vapes and smoking-related litter and build on Scotland’s leadership in this area.
We are planning on issuing a press release on Wednesday 27th May focusing on this statistical information and our collaborative asks, under embargo for 1st June. We invite comments from both of you to include to highlight the successes and further opportunities.
We wish you every success, and look forward to engaging with you in the months ahead.
Yours sincerely,
Less Waste Laura Marine Conservation Society Keep Scotland Beautiful ASH Scotland
Edinburgh-based community research projects receive up to £5000 funding
Projects based at Lauriston Farm Cooperative and the Scottish Youth Parliament
Part of Healthy Planet, Healthy People awards administered by Royal Society of Edinburgh and Williamson Trust
Community groups in Edinburgh have received a share of over £339K as part of the Healthy Planet, Healthy People project run by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Williamson Trust.
These community research funding awards enable and encourage knowledge exchange and collaborative research practices amongst and between local communities. The resulting findings and outputs are often scalable, producing valuable insights that can be used by similar groups working in other areas of the country and beyond.
The Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP) has been awarded almost £5000 to run a youth-led research programme into young people of colour’s safe access to green spaces. Through this project, theSYP aims to challenge the structural barriers faced by young people of colour when accessing natural spaces and provide evidence and tangible actions to decision-makers on what needs to change.
Daniela Onyewuenyi MSYP, board member of the Scottish Youth Parliament, said: “We are so lucky that in Scotland our natural landscape, no matter how big or small, is full of beauty.
“However, there are many barriers to access these spaces. This is why as a working group we decided to look at how young people of colour access those spaces or, on the contrary, why they feel they can’t.”
Rhyze Mushrooms, based at Lauriston, were awarded £5000 to test the performance of a variety of different composts that can be made using business waste, such as coffee chaff, agricultural waste and food scraps.
Working with local food businesses, the Rhyze Mushrooms team will explore how vermicomposting can prevent business waste from ending up in landfill by transforming it into high-quality soil improvers that enhance the health, yield, and nutrition of crops.
Vermicomposting is the process of using worms to consume organic waste and convert it into nutrient-rich compost.
Roxy Minter, member of the Rhyze cooperative, said: “Rhyze is a community-led, Edinburgh-based workers cooperative specialising in transforming waste into food and soil amendments.
“We are delighted to have been awarded this grant by the RSE and Williamson Trust. With this support, we will run a first-of-its-kind trial in our worm farm: to compare whether and how the castings produced by composting worms vary according to what they are fed. This will help us to understand whether some varieties of castings benefit particular crops over others.”
The Seeds of Change project will support the development of the Scottish Seed Hub; a co-operative of growers based at the Edinburgh Agroecology Co-operative CIC in Lauriston.
The group has been awarded £5000, and are aiming to increase the production and dissemination of locally-adapted, open-pollinated seeds grown using optimal agroecological practices.
By improving access to seeds suited to this country’s climate, the Hub hopes to enhance the biodiversity, and resilience of Scotland’s food system.
Lisa Houston of the Scottish Seed Hub said: “The Scottish Seed Hub has been created by a group of Scottish agroecological mixed vegetable farms to increase the growth, sharing and selling, of open pollinated bio-regionally adapted seeds.
“The founding growers are delighted to receive support through the Catalyst award to undertake a participatory action research project to help develop an organisational framework to guide the Scottish Seed Hub’s formalisation and growth to help us grow, and create lasting impact towards seed sovereignty in Scotland.”
A total of £5000 has been awarded to a Scotland-wide project “Conifers aren’t just for Christmas”, run by conifer expert Jennie Martin in collaboration with Scottish Forestry and the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh.
She will create a simple and accessible field guide to conifers in Scotland, hoping to kick-start a more conifer-literate society amongst forest school leaders, ecological surveyors, wilderness guides, and nature lovers alike.
Jennie Martin MSc FLS Ethnobotany, Conservation, Botanical Literacy, said: “Conifers are vital to our landscapes, ecosystems, and climate, yet they are often overlooked due to the challenge of identifying them.
“I am extremely grateful to The Royal Society of Edinburgh and The Williamson Trust for the Healthy Planet, Healthy People: Catalyst Award, which will enable the creation of an accessible field guide to common UK and Irish conifers.
“This grant will support people to become more conifer literate by recognising and understanding these remarkable trees more effectively.”
First initiated in 2023, Healthy Planet, Healthy People Awards are now offered under two strands – Catalyst Awards and Change Awards.
Catalyst Awards are designed to enable community-led research across any discipline that promotes the health of individuals by fostering healthy communities, environments, and food quality and supply. These awards offer up to £5000 to pilot a project. This year a total of £99,250 has been awarded to 20 projects across Scotland.
Change Awards are designed to support standout projects – that previously received Catalyst funding – with major funding to grow and scale their work. This year four projects in the Orkney islands, Isle of Lewis, Cupar and Kirkcaldy have been awarded a total of £240,217 between them.
Professor David Salt FRSE, Chair of the Williamson Trust, said: “As this community-led work continues to grow there can be no doubt communities across Scotland can build local solutions to ongoing challenges to our environment, our communities and our food.
This round we have projects spanning seed saving, community growing, fermentation and composting to coppicing, tree identification, accessing green space, transhumance and repair café. An amazing array of projects.
“The Trust hopes that with these new awards we continue to build a movement of committed people to find solutions to the challenges faced by local communities, and that these solutions can have wider impact.”
Royal Society of Edinburgh Vice President, Research, Professor Anne Anderson OBE FRSE added: “This marks the third successful round of Healthy Planet, Healthy People: Catalyst Awards, which were introduced to expand the type of research the RSE supports.
“We are also very pleased to announce the first recipients of the Healthy Planet, Healthy People: Change Awards; a new development of the Healthy Planet, Healthy People Programme, which extends the support offered to grassroots groups and demonstrates the Society’s commitment to empowering community-driven research focused on positively impacting sustainability, health, and community resilience.
“I congratulate all those awarded under both schemes, and I look forward to following their progress and achievements over the coming year.”
Developed with partners, including Scottish Water, Edinburgh World Heritage and NatureScot, the two-year plan was agreed last March. It includes 125 actions required to deliver on the overarching Climate Ready Edinburgh Plan, which sets out the strategic approach needed to make sure that Edinburgh can adapt and respond locally to the risks and impact of climate change.
Tuesday’s update shows the positive progress made in the 12 months to March 2026, with 15 of the actions complete and 83 in progress and on track. These include:
Three new parks – Mill Lane Park, North Junction Street Park and Dalmeny Street Park – established in Leith as part of Edinburgh’s Nature Network – as part of a more strategic approach to manage, restore and enhance Edinburgh’s urban landscape. The new parks are vibrant community spaces, where both wildlife and people can thrive.
Delivery of a Climate Ready Craigleith project at Orchard Park to tackle frequent flooding of properties and streets. The project includes new sustainable drainage systems to help reduce flooding issues and increase biodiversity, alongside changes to the wider environment creating a pleasant place for people and wildlife.
A new cross-boundary river partnership for the Gogarburn area and progress of the Restore the Burn project. Addressing the impact that pollution, flooding and erosion have had on local communities, as well as the wildlife that lives along the burn, including an improved Active Travel Network and better-connected habitats with improved wildlife and biodiversity along the river corridor.
Production of new Edinburgh Design Guidance embedding climate adaptation, green-blue infrastructure and the nature crisis into how new development is shaped across the city. The guidance includes a focus on making sure that planning focuses on net zero, nature-positive places designed to limit greenhouse emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
Council Leader Jane Meagher said: “We’re already seeing the impacts of a changing climate in Edinburgh, with more frequent severe storms causing flooding, damage to buildings and disruption to travel.
“We knew when we declared a climate emergency that we had to act quickly, both in terms of tackling the causes but also taking steps to prepare for the inevitable changes to the weather.
“We also knew we couldn’t do it alone and we needed the help of other city organisations – and our residents – to make a meaningful difference.
“I’m pleased, then, that we set the ambitious goals that we did, and that we’re now making good progress on delivering against our plans.
“As set out in this first annual update, we’ve completed a range of projects and initiatives that will make a real difference to communities in Edinburgh, while ensuring we’re better prepared for the challenges that lie ahead.”
Friday 29 May, 2-3 pm at Granton Castle Walled Garden
Join Vii from MycoBee Mushrooms CIC for a fun and hands-on introduction to the fascinating world of fungi. This family-friendly session is designed for children and parents to explore nature together through engaging, outdoor activities.
At MycoKids, you’ll discover the hidden world of fungi and learn why they are so important for our ecosystems; all in a playful and accessible way.
Our next Positive Climate Film Club screening will be on Tuesday 26th May 18.00-20.45.
This time it is a more serious evening with the People’s Emergency Briefing which is an up to date fact check on the latest scientific and ecological (nature) information within the climate and nature crises.
This briefing style film charts our UK and global situation across many different topics such as food, transport, weather patterns and nature health from experts in each field, followed by discussion by well known faces such as Chris Packham and Jennifer Saunders.
It will be an interesting night and we are inviting politicians across the parties to respond too.
Book your tickets early here – this will be at full capacity!
Edinburgh Remakery diverted 47 tons of e-waste from landfill in 2024, rising to 52 tons in 2025.
Refurbished devices are donated to people in digital poverty
Businesses benefit by having a trusted partner to wipe IT equipment and add to ESG credentials
Edinburgh Remakery’s contribution to tackling e-waste and digital exclusion has been recognised with the King’s Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development 2026.
It is one of just 185 organisations across the UK to be recognised with a King’s Award for Enterprise in 2026.
The prestigious award acknowledges Edinburgh Remakery’s outstanding achievement in sustainability.
The charity specialises in ethical IT asset disposal and the refurbishment of donated devices for people experiencing digital exclusion.
It previously won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development 2022.
Sustainability at the core
Edinburgh Remakery’s partners, and the public, donate unwanted devices that are professionally wiped, refurbished and then reused.
In 2024, the organisation diverted 47 tonnes of e-waste from landfill, preventing over 1.1 million kilograms of carbon emissions.
In the same year, through its Tech Gifting Programme, Edinburgh Remakery provided 295 refurbished devices to individuals across Scotland facing digital exclusion.
Tackling e-waste one laptop at a time
Elaine Brown, chief executive officer of Edinburgh Remakery, said: “The King’s Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development is wonderful recognition of Edinburgh Remakery’s achievements and bolsters our credentials as a credible, impactful partner for businesses across the UK.
“We are tackling the fastest-growing waste stream in the world.
“Businesses trust us to ‘clean’ and wipe their donated laptops, tablets and other devices to industry standards and help those devices have a second life.
“We collaborate with charities to provide refurbished devices to people experiencing digital exclusion – it could be a desktop computer for a family, a laptop for an individual or a games console for a young carer.
“Since we entered the award, we’ve actually increased our output – in 2025 we diverted 52 tonnes of e-waste from landfill, a 10% increase in one year.
“We divert waste, create green jobs and tackle exclusion – one laptop at a time.”
EGS benefits for business
Elaine emphasised that Edinburgh Remakery has the capacity to deliver benefits for more UK businesses: “If you’re a business, you have tech. We should be the first choice of partner for any organisations that are disposing of electronic items.
“Working with Edinburgh Remakery bolsters organisations’ environmental, social and governance credentials by diverting waste from landfill and creating social good.”
The King’s Awards for Enterprise are the UK’s most prestigious business awards. Winners are allowed to display the King’s Awards Emblem for the next five years — a globally recognised mark of excellence.
Applications for the 2027 King’s Awards open today – 6 May 2026.
