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Celebrate Earth Day 2011 by pledging to reduce your carbon footprint
April 20th, 2011 by Simon HaddockThis coming Friday, April 22nd, is Good Friday and a lot of people in the UK will be enjoying the start of two consecutive long weekends away from work. But April 22nd isn’t just a religious holiday; it’s also Earth Day 2011.
The theme of this year’s Earth Day is ‘A Billion Acts of Green’ – the idea is to make a pledge to do something to help the environment. As of Saturday morning, 96,484,870 pledges had already been made through the earthday website, [http://act.earthday.org/] with the top pledge being to plant a garden at school or home. Other pledges include eliminating the use of pesticides, walking instead of using a vehicle for short distances and switching off the light when leaving a room.
Everybody can help make the UK a greener place to live; government, both national and local, industry and Joe public all have a role to play. At local level, the Sustainable Cities Index tracks the progress of Britain’s 20 largest cities and sitting at the top of the charts, for the second year running, is Newcastle.
Way back in 2002, the Carbon Neutral Newcastle partnership announced it intended to become a carbon neutral city. The city is at the centre of a vibrant clean-tech cluster in the North East region and one of its ambitions is to become a world-class centre of science and innovation. It also aspires to make the North East the ‘electric car capital’ of the UK with up to 1,000 charging points in Newcastle and Gateshead alone. However, there’s still a lot more to be done before any of our cities rank up there with the best in Europe.
How will you celebrate Earth Day 2011? What pledge will you make to cut down your carbon footprint?
Tags: carbon neutral, earth day, earth day 2011, environment, environment industry, gateshead, Good Friday, green energy, green jobs, newcastle, sustainability