Plymouth community group wins national community award
A Plymouth community group has won a national award in recognition of its work in making the local area a better place to live.
Environment Plymouth won the Best Community Group Contribution to Environmental Sustainability award at the Groundwork Community Awards at a national awards ceremony hosted by the charity in the Houses of Parliament on Thursday 22 November.
Groundwork, a national charity who works across the UK to support communities to change places and change lives, launched its awards in 2017 to honour small community groups making a big difference to everyone’s quality of life and to celebrate and reward groups who often get little recognition and support.
Environment Plymouth are a community group who have only been going for a year but have achieved a great deal. EP coordinate a network of 70 local groups and 300 individual members in Plymouth representing ‘green’ issues. Over the past 12 months, five dedicated and tenacious volunteers have organised and led monthly meetings on various topics, including air quality, Fairtrade, plastics, trees, and green spaces.
Thanks to their work, Plymouth Waterfront achieved Surfers Against Sewage ‘Plastic Free Status’ in June 2018 – the first city in the UK to achieve this. The project was inspired by a network meeting they held in December 2017 on marine plastic, which happened to be day after the last in series of Blue Planet. By January, they had managed to get funding from South West Water to take a plastic free coastline initiative forward and they contacted Surfers against Sewage to register to use their Plastic Free framework.
EP have worked tirelessly, contacting businesses, organisations and individuals on a campaign that has recruited nearly 80 Business Pioneers and over 60 Community Ambassadors. Members of both groups have all committed to removing three plastic items of single use plastic from everyday use and identify an action to reduce plastic use in the future, leading to Plymouth’s achievement of securing ‘Plastic Free Status’ for the waterfront in just 5 months.
Penny Tarrant from Environment Plymouth said:
“We were delighted to be chosen as an Award winner and will share this with our partner organisations who do so much to boost the ‘plastic free’ campaign.
Plastic may be a global problem but by working together we have proved we can make a local difference and this Award will help us to work with even more communities in the city, making even more of a difference to our environment.”
Graham Duxbury, Groundwork’s national CEO, said:
“I’d like to congratulate Environment Plymouth on winning the award and wish them every success going forward in continuing to be a positive and inspiring voice and example for local people. This year, we received over 600 Groundwork Community Award applications that show the positive difference that local people are making in their local towns and cities.
“The Groundwork Community Awards have provided a platform for us to celebrate the amazing work that groups across the UK are doing to make their local communities better places to live.”
Groundwork Community Awards were sponsored by - B&Q, Buzzacott, Firmdale Hotels, Givewith, GVA, John Lewis Partnership, M&S, the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, Peel Land & Property and Tesco.
Find out more: www.groundwork.org.uk/communityawards
