World Environment Day

To celebrate World Environment Day, we wanted to recognise the amazing achievements we've made since launching our Green Plan in April 2023.

Carmen, our Green Ambassador, has had a look back over everything we've achieved so far.

Our main aim for the Green Plan is for Persona to be Net Zero by 2038. This means we have set a target to reduce greenhouse gasses (like carbon dioxide) we are releasing into our atmosphere. We can do this by producing less gas and also finding ways to absorb what is already in the atmosphere.

The main aims of our green plan are to:

• reduce our fuel consumption – we have already replaced our maintenance vehicles with electric vehicles. We're also promoting active and sustainable travel by introducing a bike shelter at Basecamp and have purchased a new wheelchair assisted vehicle for our Extra Care night cover, which othe services can book to use during the day

• reduce our energy consumption – by replacing lights with LED lights, exploring better ways to control our heating systems, and using more renewable energy sources

• reduce our waste – by understanding how much waste we produce in our services so we can reduce this by recycling, reusing, and upcycling

• encourage staff and teams to go green – we want staff and teams to pledge as green champions for their services and help their teams to engage in our green plan

See below for a poster summarising our Green Plans aims:

Click here for a printable poster.

What have we achieved so far?

• Worked with our comms teams to develop:

- some posters on being green both in services as well as our homes. Click here for the services poster and here for the home poster.

- a poster to celebrate this year’s Earth Day theme, ‘Planet vs Plastics’. Click here for a printable copy of the poster.

• Worked closely with the Waste Collection Team at Bury Council:

arranging recycling bins for our services to promote recycling. There are a lot of very keen recyclers amongst the people we support who have shared their stories of how they can help the centres recycle and reduce their waste.  

• Teamed up with Clair McKinnon and Angela Duncan on a project:

to see how we can be green about our printing. We took the report to our Information and Governance Committee meeting to decide what our plans for this will be.

• Circulated ‘A Green Pledge‘ within each service:

this is an opportunity for all the people we support and the staff to pledge what they are going to achieve in the next 12 months. I received positive feedback and some amazing ideas.

• Worked with Bernard, John and the maintenance team to install fans:

to help circulate heating to better aid with the heating issues in bigger rooms.

• Attended Shared Lives and Elmhurst Committee meetings:

to discuss what they are doing to contribute to our Green Plan and what support they need from us to achieve their goals.

• Delivered two presentations at Persona Your Voice Committee:

on our green plan and discussed what we can do to recycle more.

We are only 12 months in to the plan and I feel we are on track to achieving our goal, we have already accomplished a lot this year. Plans for the next year are looking at the energy consumption in our services and how we can reduce this.

Carmen does monthly blogs as part of her Green Ambassador role, click here to read her most recent blog.