Neston Earth Group
Neston Earth Group is a community based group focused on promoting interest and care of the local environment and raising awareness of the climate emergency. We aim to think globally and act locally. Our group was founded in 2019 following the success of the Neston EarthFestival at the Neston Community and Youth Centre with the desire to keep green initiatives moving in the community.
Our members have networked with Wirral and Cheshire West and Chester Councils, and Mersey Forest amongst others and we are listed on the Mersey Green Map run by Transition Liverpool and the Big Green List run by the Wirral Environmental Network. We are networking with local supermarkets such as Sainsbury’s with the goal of reinstating their plastic bag recycling point.
Before lockdown, we had guest speakers at meetings including Simon Brown from Transition Town Chester, Councillor Louise Gittins and Cheshire West and Chester Council's Climate Emergency Champion Matt Bryan.
Our members have recently taken part in local climate justice events such as Global Day for Climate Justice, Ring out for Climate initiative, Climate rally on Chester Dee Bridge and the Chester Climate Fair. We hope to network further with other local groups so we can be part of a wider community that is dedicated to making our planet greener. We are stronger together!
A small group of our members have also decided to become volunteer Tree Wardens, supporting the local Tree Warden group. Tree Wardens plant, protect and promote their local trees through education, after care and rejuvenating woodland for example.
Alongside this initiative we hope to promote the Queen’s Green Canopy project which invites people from across the UK to plant a tree for the jubilee. Community groups and schools are able to apply for free native tree packs supplied by the Woodland Trust. As well as inviting the planting of new trees, The Queen’s Green Canopy will dedicate a network of 70 Ancient Woodlands across the United Kingdom and identify 70 Ancient Trees to celebrate Her Majesty’s 70 years of service.
Our group has been talking with Neston High School about “A Big Bang for Plastic Recycling”. The project is focussed on creating a network to transform plastic waste that can’t be commonly recycled (types 2, 3 and 5). The High School now have a recycling workspace where they can shred plastic into flakes which can be placed in moulds to create new products. You can read more about the wider project here: https://preciousplastic.com/index.html.
Lastly, we promote the actions of individuals in our group that will help the environment; we can all do our bit to help out. Actions such as: joining a local litter pick, researching how we can each reduce the energy and water use in our own homes, helping the wildlife in our gardens and repairing items rather than buying new.
If you’d like to find out more, join our meetings, or hear about what we accomplish in the future please email nestonearthgroup@gmail.com or you can find us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/nestonearthgroup. We’d love to hear from you!
