Every Action Counts – looking after east London’s environment
ELBA’s business and community partners have been working together to maintain and improve the environment in east London for over 30 years. However, the increasing urgency to respond to the climate crisis and to support wildlife and ecology has led to a strong interest in trying to do more. We are working in an urban context, with a high density population and built environment. There are however, a lot of parks and open space and the combined actions of a large city population can have a real impact.
To step up our efforts we have been working closely with sustainability and environmental experts from our business and community partners and we have gathered together our environmental work into four new workstreams. It is all based on the idea that Every Action Counts – every tree planted, every habitat enhanced, every bit of plastic kept out of the biosphere, every bit of carbon reduced – all adds up together to make a difference.
Land and carbon – We are expecting a very active summer working in parks and open spaces. Planting trees and hedgerows helps sequester carbon, but the work we do in the greenspaces of east London also helps support the habitats and bio-diversity of our urban environment.
Plastic and water – There has been a lot of focus on plastic waste getting into the oceans of the world – its journey starts somewhere else. We have been picking up plastic waste in east London for three decades – but we have some new ideas. Firstly, about how to recycle plastic film into eco bricks which can be used for small community landscaping projects. We have teams of volunteers gathering plastic from east London’s waterways, and we will be working with community organisations to engage people in a debate about how we can reduce the amount of plastic we use in the first place.
Education and Debate – Everyone has an interest in climate and environment response and ELBA will be bringing young people and business people together for debates, discussion and joint projects.
Environmental Capacity and Resilience – We want to help build the capacity of local organisations to develop their response plans, and to support them in engaging local communities to strengthen their resilience to climate change.
As ever, ELBA’s focus is on making things happen – bringing business volunteers and experts together with local community organisations in a series of very practical actions. We have some big milestones coming up – Earth Day on 22nd April and World Environment Day on 5th June, which this year are attracting more interest than ever before.
If you would like to get involved and make your actions count, please do get in touch: info@elba-1.org.uk.
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