• Lancashire Climate Action Network (LancsCAN)… goes live!

    Today, the website for the newly created Lancashire Climate Action Network (LancsCAN) goes officially live. LancsCAN was formed in June 2023 following the first Lancashire Community Climate Action Forum event held on 17 May 2023 at Edge Hill University, with SustainNET as the lead organiser. The Network’s membership currently comprises around 100 people from about 60 community-oriented organisations from…

  • COP27 – Something’s got to change

    It’s that time of the year again for the annual COP (Conference of the Parties) climate summit. This time we are in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for COP27. Last year the UK hosted COP26 in Glasgow. The COP process is the political decision-making arm of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Intergovernmental…

  • Edge Hill University committed to action on climate change

    Edge Hill University has joined with Universities UK (UUK) and fellow universities from across the UK to showcase their climate change research as part of a major new campaign backed by actress and environmentalist Lily Cole. The campaign follows a new poll carried out by Universities UK and Opiniom which has revealed that parents see…

  • Ferns: the houseplants that reveal how tropical rainforests are responding to climate change

    Ferns are at their most diverse and abundant in the world’s tropical rainforests. This warm and humid ecosystem is heaven for these plants, which unfurl their feather-like leaves in the damp and shaded understory. So how did they ever come to colonise British living rooms? If you have a potted fern at home, your choice…

  • Walking the Walk: Including Ethnic Minorities in Green Initiatives

    As the press has recently highlighted, walking is both an expression as well as a means to develop positive relationships with the outdoors. But is the ‘outdoors’ a flat realm within the Anthropocene? The inequalities of urban inhabitation are widely known and talked about. Since COVID-19 blurred the boundaries of the private and public while extending the…

  • Sefton Coasts for Kids Shortlisted

    Sefton Coasts for Kids – an initiative to inspire the next generation of learners to protect the world’s coastlines – has been shortlisted for a Liverpool City Region Culture and Creativity Award. If you remember back to the Sustainability Festival ‘Together Tuesday’, Irene Delgado-Fernandez did a talk ‘Coasts for Kids – where imagination meets science!‘…

  • Tread Lightly On The Planet

    Monday 31st January 4pmDora Frankel EnsembleTread Lightly On The Planet Performances will take place in The Hub Tread Lightly on the Planet is a dance work about the climate emergency and how humans are caught up in it, inspired by some of the painter JMW Turner’s most iconic images. Dance and electronic music, mixed live…

  • Five Fascinating Insights into the Inner Lives of Plants

    Approximately 4.5 billion years ago, Earth’s land surface was barren and devoid of life. It would take another 2 billion years for the first single-celled organisms to appear in the ocean, including the first algae Grypania spiralis, which was about the size of a 50 pence piece. Plants composed of many cells have only been…

  • Everything’s Gone Green

    Like the Edge Hill ducks, when it comes to sustainability, there’s a lot going on beneath the surface of the Edge Hill campus. This includes reducing its carbon footprint (webbed and unwebbed). From using energy from renewable sources to ensuring halls of residence have the most efficient insulation systems, from the development of “green” roofs…

  • A poetic reverie: reflections on a year spent getting closer to nature

    Lecturer, researcher, poet and outdoor enthusiast Victoria Ekpo looks back on the first year of FootstepsNW, the walking and activity group she founded for Black women and their friends in the north west. It was important that our group expanded to include others, like the environment does for us daily, and that this generosity be…