Race for the Environment

Being active in our natural environment will not in itself contribute to the health of our planet, but it will improve your health and wellbeing.  We also hope it will encourage you to take some steps in your daily lives to look after our beautiful environment.  There is a lot you can do through and together with our partners will be providing links and details through the site to help you make a fantastic contribution to the health of our planet.

The UK is the 8th largest CO2 emitter globally. We contribute roughly 2% of global emissions with only 1% of the world’s population. May not sound like a big deal, but that means we each emit roughly 10 tonnes of CO2 per person per year.  The government has set an emissions target of 8.32 tonnes per UK citizen by 2012 and 4.16 tonnes by 2050.

Whilst in 2009, 190 countries will try to clinch a new climate deal at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. We are mindful of the fact that whilst the politicians ratify a new international agreement on CO2 reductions, we can choose to take some more immediate steps and make our own contribution to the health of our planet.
On average we use 70% more electricity per household than we did in 1970, largely due to the greater number of power hungry appliances and worse for the environment, the majority of appliances have a standby mode which means they continually use energy even when they’re not being used!