Brighter days, spring in the air and green shoots – March is here!

It is hard to believe that it is 12 months since we dedicated March, our ‘Go Green’ month, to kickstart our drive to do as much as possible to reduce our impact on the environment.
No one could have predicted what came next. This month marks a year since England experienced its first Covid-19 lockdown and it also marks the first step in the country getting out of this period of lockdown.
We know that many of you will be looking forward to schools going back from March 8 and some outdoor activities taking place from March 29 and we are looking forward to being able to fully open the centre again in April.
March often feels like a month of new beginnings, the lighter mornings and evenings make us feel that we have more time to do things, many of us venture outside more and the crocus and daffodil shoots can be seen poking through the mud. March also heralds the start of spring; we can already hear the birds singing away merrily in the morning and the vaccine roll out coupled with the roadmap out of lockdown have brought some hope.
We’ve relooked at the environmental pledges we’d set last year and are refreshing them for the next 12 months. They will include our aim to increase our overall recycling rate to 80%, plans to work with local businesses to clean up and maintain the Lakeside area and the introduction of additional recycling streams such as collections for batteries and printer cartridges.
Each March we’ll review our pledges and set out how these can be improved and what additional plans we have to make a positive difference to the environment. We’ll do this because we really want to demonstrate that these are not just words written on a piece of paper and that we will be taking firm action.
Our planned Big Lakeside Clean Up for last March had to be moved due to the lockdown but we managed to do a socially distanced litter pick in September and thanks to the support of Business Doncaster and local food outlets we collected a whopping 19 bags of litter from the area. We’ll be looking to do this again this year.
If each of us takes a good look at what we are doing and the impact on the environment we can find ways to change for the better and together we can make a difference.