Our action group promoting sustainability in Waltham Forest
A history of being green
Our charity has awlays taken it's repsonibilities to be more sustainable very seriously and we've tried to lead by example wherever possible.
Green History
A few ways that our charity has tried to be more eco-friendly wherever possible over the years:
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Purchasing high quality toys and equipment designed to last
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Re-use of recyclable materials in our arts and crafts activities
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A good balance of vegetarian and plant based foods included on our menus
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Conserving energy by turning off lighting and devices when not in use
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Using water coolers to reduce plastic bottle use
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Buying from local suppliers wherever possible
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Appointing a dedicated, trustee-led sustainability subgroup to drive our sustainability work and provide good governance.
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This group has been re-branded as 'ecO' to help us promote our work more easily.
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2023 Eco-Audit
After identifying that we wanted to go fruther to be more sustainble, we realised that we needed some expert assistance to assess just how sustainable we were.
We needed an eco-audit!
We bid for and were awarded funding from the City Bridge Foundation allowing us to bring in '3 Acorns' environmental consultants
to perform a full eco-audit with our teams.
Our eco-audit analysed everything from our energy and water consumption, consumables usage and waste output through to ingredients used in our menus and even the greenness of our banking suppliers!
Responding to our eco-audit
Actions we've already taken to reduce our carbon foot print
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Food
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We've increased the number of plant based options in our menus and completely removed the most polluting meat, beef.
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Water
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We've replaced plastic water syphons with filter jugs in our staff rooms and we're also exploring ways to:
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completely eliminate plastic water bottles usage
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collect rainwater safley for gardening and outdoors cleaning.
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use cistern blocks and water usage awareness campaigns to reduce our consumption.
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Finance
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Most of our financial arrangemetns are now placed with ethical and eco-friendly providers.
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We're exploring ways to bank more sustainably and ethically as a priority.
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Waste
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We've installed more recyling bins and made it much easier to spearate out the various materials
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Composting bins are also now in place cutting out any food wastaging that would've gon to landfil.
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Nappies
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We are working hard to replace disposable nappies with reusable nappy kits in our centres and are currently piloting the switch in our Higham Hill Centre with a view to rolling out at the Lloyd Park Centre too.
- Our Community Services team are also promoting resusable nappy usage in other community support sessions across Waltham Forest.
- We couldn't have achieved this without the support of three amazing organisations;
- Waltham Forest Cloth Nappy Library, the Women's Environmental Network (WEN) and Nappy Ever After.
- Many, many thanks to them, we're looking forward to conintuing our work together!
- Waltham Forest Cloth Nappy Library, the Women's Environmental Network (WEN) and Nappy Ever After.
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See our dedicated Cloth Nappy page here
Working with our community to address
the climate crisis
We want to go much further in working with our local community to build a greener, brighter future for our children, and we need your help!
Whether you're an interested parent/carer, a local service provider, another organisation working on sustainability or an individual with expertise to share, we want to hear from you!
