On Thursday 16 June 2005,
Anne Kirkham, the daughter of gardening expert
Percy Thrower, will be ‘mucking in’ to help
the environment at a Shrewsbury nursery.
Anne will be planting a eucalyptus tree at
the Earlyworld Nursery in Shelton as part
of their work to celebrate World Environment
Day over the past week. The planting will
take place at 11:30 and Anne will be assisted
by Karen Pearce, an Environment Agency team
leader who has children at the nursery.
The children attending the nursery have been
showing they care about the environment and
its future for World Environment Day 2005.
This event, June 5, was organised by the United
Nations to mark the start of a period during
which people from all over the world to make
small changes to their lifestyles to help
the planet. The Environment Agency has been
co-ordinating the day in England and Wales.
The activities have been designed to raise
their awareness of the environment and the
small life-style changes the children and
their parents can make to help it.
Activities the children have got involved
in have included:
Wearing the colour green on June 6 2005 and
playing with a green theme making models from
household ‘junk’ such as toilet rolls, cartons
and cereal boxes.
Discussing ways to help the environment and
what pledges they can make to help celebrate
World Environment Day. The pledges have been
hung on the branches on a new tree bought
by Earlyworld. This will be planted in the
nursery’s garden to commemorate the children’s
pledges.
The nursery have also worked with parents
in order to get them to help the environment.
The principal way they can do this is by logging
online and make a free pledge to make one
or more of the simple lifestyle changes. Pledges
include reusing bags when going shopping,
using only the water you need when boiling
the kettle and insulating the loft and hot-water
tank.
These are small changes but they can make
a big difference. For instance, if everyone
in England and Wales turned their tap off
when cleaning their teeth could save 1,590,000,000
litres of water a day – enough to fill more
than 630 Olympic swimming pools.
The importance of reducing carbon dioxide
emissions and saving water is outlined in
our recent report on climate change and these
actions can help do this.
Last year over 12,000 people signed up to
one or more pledges and in a year they saved
over 100 million litres of water, reduced
of carbon dioxide emissions by one million
kg and cleared half a million plastic bags
from the environment.
