Fife College staff volunteer to plant trees and promote carbon reduction

A team of Fife College staffers has spent a day volunteering in the Fife community to help promote biodiversity and carbon reduction.

As part of a drive to expand awareness of climate change and the climate impacts of everyday actions, the Procurement Team at the College have completed training to attain Carbon Literacy Accreditation.

One of the requirements of gaining the accreditation is to make a number of personal and group commitments for action that will reduce carbon, and so the whole department committed to two days of volunteering a year to plant trees in the Fife community.

Last week, the team were in Methil planting over 30 trees to help expand a biodiversity corridor in the Savoy Park, before going on to help out with planting, weeding and painting at the Methil Community Garden.

The team's efforts at the garden were facilitated by Community-Led Environmental Action for Regeneration (CLEAR), a charity compromising of local residents from Buckhaven & Methil who play a key role in helping transforming their towns.

The work was also timed to coincide with the COP26 climate change conference taking place in Glasgow this month, as the whole country is being asked to think about what they can do to help tackle the global climate emergency.

Head of Procurement at Fife College, Sharon Dewar said:

“I’m really grateful to the whole procurement team for rolling their sleeves up and getting involved in this initiative.

“It was a tough day’s work, but we’re delighted with the end result and hopefully these trees will help promote biodiversity in Methil for many years to come.

“Along with the sprucing up we’ve done at the CLEAR Community Garden, we’re just pleased we were able to do our part to help out the local area. CLEAR do terrific work and we hope our actions will encourage colleagues and other organisations to consider similar volunteer days to support community, environmental and regeneration projects.

“We’re proud to be one of the first procurement teams in the College sector to be carbon literacy accredited, and what we’ve learned will not only inform procurement decisions within the College, but it will help influence our everyday decisions going forward.”

Secretary for CLEAR Buckhaven & Methil, Allen Armstrong, said:

"We appreciate the power of work the Fife College staff team provided right at the start of the winter planting season. All the talk at COP26 needs to be accompanied by practical action exactly such as this.

"CLEAR has an ambitious planting programme of up 2,000 native tree saplings, 500 fruit trees and at least 60,000 spring bulbs every winter to help transform our community but it can be a challenge to mobilise willing and able volunteers. Joining hands with the College enables this to happen."