Cheltenham is doing their bit to keep our planet green, are you?
- Bloom News
- May 27, 2022
- 3 min read
Sustainability is the word on everyone’s lips. We are all becoming much more aware of the importance of trying to keep our planet green to protect the environment and reduce the effects of global warming. Helping our environment is top priority at the moment as researchers estimate that climate change will be irreversible by 2027, so the time is now to change our habits and make a difference.
People everywhere are trying to help keep their carbon footprint down but there is one town in particular who are doing their bit to keep our planet green.
Cheltenham have been making a conscious effort to tackle the climate emergency with the Council committing to become a net zero carbon council by 2030.
They have introduced many new schemes to help them with this mission such as planting trees, providing support to households on how to save energy and reduce fuel bills, expanding their recycling scheme to more things like aluminium coffee pods, switching their buses to electric and providing more opportunities to choose sustainable travel.
In 2020, Cheltenham became one of the first towns in the UK to become an "all electric bus town." The town has swapped their diesel buses to electric greener ones in a £5 million bid to keep Cheltenham green.
But the buses aren’t the only green way to get around Cheltenham. The Bicycle Hub is a bike hire facility at Cheltenham Spa Railway Station, which offers a range of different bikes that you can hire out for the day or even the week which means you can make greener choices when heading to work. Its aim is to help Cheltenham save the environment by encouraging people to get out on their bikes and stop driving to work every day.
Steve Short, the owner of The Bicycle Hub said: “It’s really important at a time like this to find alternative transport and just help the environment out where and when you can, obviously it’s not always possible but if you can these small changes could possibly make the world of difference.”
“We have a great selection of bikes for either short term or long-term rental, it’s not too expensive either, much cheaper than actually investing in a bike.”
The Bicycle Hire have recently set up a new scheme that allows people to have 25% off bicycle hire if they’re commuting to work every day.
“I’m really pleased with our new scheme. It’s really good to give an incentive for things like this and I’m really happy to have and the chance to be able to provide this opportunity to people. We’ve had so many more customers since announcing our scheme it’s really good to see people getting involved in keeping our planet green.”
The Cheltenham Festival have also decided they need to follow suit and take the sustainability pledge. The festivals have taken part in the shared vision for a sustainable outdoor events industry called “Vision 2025.” The purpose of the pledge is to show that outdoor events are taking steps towards become more sustainable.
The Cheltenham Festivals are ensuring that 0% of their waste will goes to landfill. They reduce and reuse single use materials on site and they ask speakers and audiences to reduce travel-related emissions by choosing public transport, car sharing, cycling, or using electric vehicles. By doing this, they aim to achieve 50% reduction in festival related annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.
Although these major changes are encouraging, there is much more that people could be doing to help our planet in a small way; small lifestyle changes will be far more effective in the long run.
So, take a look at the information below to see how you can change your lifestyle to reduce your carbon footprint and help the environment.
Comments