With £4,000 available, you could make a lasting impact on your local community and environment
Veolia, the UK’s leading resource management company, launched this year's Sustainability Fund, in partnership with Southwark Council, ahead of World Earth Day (22 April 2023) to help support people across Southwark to transform their local environments and communities.
2022 was an incredibly successful year for The Sustainability Fund, supporting seven grassroots projects with £4,000 in funding. They’re looking to back projects that make a positive, sustainable difference to the local area and to deliver long-term social and environmental benefits.
With funding as well as in-kind resources and volunteers available, Veolia aims to empower people to take positive action in their local area and deliver ecological transformation.
Projects are encouraged to apply now at veolia.co.uk/Sustainability-Fund.
Applications opened 21 April, just in time to celebrate World Earth Day 2023. On this day, every year, global residents are encouraged to act, innovate and implement and Veolia is investing in our planet by championing the innovations of local activists.
If you’re unsure whether your project fits the criteria, here are some examples of previous projects that were successful in previous years:
- Bellenden Primary School Garden teachers saw that without a garden at home, many students don’t have access to a green space where they can build environmental awareness. With support from Veolia’s Sustainability Fund for tools and compost, the gardening club of twenty children started planting in September 2022.
- We Are Wilder’s Canopi Borough Wildlife Garden is part of the Wilder Mile Project aimed at radically improving biodiversity in one square mile of Southwark. After depaving 200 square metres surrounding the Canopi Borough office building, organisers and volunteers began work on the woodland garden with pollinator friendly plants and compost provided by the Fund.
- Mint Street Music Festival CIC’s ‘Our Plastic, Our Thames’ Participatory Art campaign will transform hard-to-recycle plastic waste, such as crisp packets into public artworks. The aim is to start conversations about plastic pollution in the River Thames and ask residents how they can take action to minimise their waste and protect their natural environment.
Veolia’s Sustainability Fund is open to not-for-profit organisations, community groups or individuals in areas where the company partners with the local authority to deliver waste and cleansing services for the community.
Applications can be made via Veolia’s website veolia.co.uk/Sustainability-Fund or via Spacehive spacehive.com/movement/veoliauk, Veolia’s crowdfunding partner until Friday 29th September.
Keep an eye out on Facebook and Twitter @VeoliaUK to discover other projects that may inspire you or that you can get involved with in your local community.
All applications will be considered, but projects should aim to fulfil at least one of the following criteria; enhancing biodiversity, promoting sustainable behaviours (reduce, reuse and/or recycle), protecting or preserving resources and the environment and using recycled, reused or reclaimed materials.
Pascal Hauret, Managing Director, Municipal at Veolia said:
The Sustainability Fund was one of our greatest successes of 2022 and we’re so thrilled to see it growing again, with more Local Authority partners on board and an even bigger funding pot. As we work towards ecological transformation in collaboration with the communities we work with every day, we can’t wait to see the inspiring and innovative ideas they come up with in 2023.
Hannah Metcalfe, Mint Street Music Festival CIC, Our Plastic, Our Thames Participatory Art:
Plastic is useful for so many things and it can even be beautiful in its own way, brightly coloured or reflective silver. Unfortunately a lot of plastic isn’t recycled and ends up polluting the environment for decades to come. Our project is to work with the Southwark community to highlight the impact we have on the river Thames, a force of nature running right through our city but compromised in its ability to sustain life by the constant stream of plastic rubbish that flows into it.