How can the everyday actions of people in Easton and Lawrence Hill encourage fellow residents to make positive changes to improve our environment?

Bristol is seen as a ‘green capital’ and leader on climate and nature emergency action. More and more businesses and public sector organisations are responding, and the contribution that our diverse communities and citizens can make is increasingly important.

Eastside Community Trust is working with Ed Atkins, a Bristol University academic working on environment and equality, and Ian Townsend, Redfield resident and former head of Bristol Green Capital Partnership, on the project, with support from the University of Bristol’s Brigstow Institute. We are interviewing local people to gather stories of what you are doing to help the environment of our community and city.  The stories collected will be presented to city environment organisations and academics to explore the ways their experiences could be shared more widely – and inspire people-driven change across the city. This will feed into our Community Climate Action project, with five other Bristol communities.

Ian and Ed said: “We want to look at how people can inspire others through all the things they might be able to do in their own lives. That could be, volunteering to look after a cherished green space or growing your own food, not using a car, or reducing energy or use of plastics. There are so many ways to share your personal stories now, and we want to look at which ones might work best here in Bristol, and help those in other places.”

You can find ideas of things you can do at www.bristolclimatehub.org.

Residents can support each other in taking action and be a part of something that spans our community and city.

Eastside Community Trust is excited to be partnering with Bristol Energy Network to pilot a new community ‘Pledge-to-Action’ project using an online tool called Giki Zero. By signing up to use this tool and joining the “Eastside Community Trust” team, residents will be able to understand their individual carbon footprint, and will be given ideas for action they can take to reduce it. Residents can then “pledge” to try different actions – whether that’s around food, energy use, transport or consumption. All the Eastside pledges will be pooled together to show us the most popular pledges in our area and our progress as a community, as well as help us identify the barriers to further action. Working with residents, we hope to use this information to provide support and develop local community-based solutions to help turn more pledges into action and to shape future projects and campaigns. Watch this space for updates!