21 June 2018 – Clean Air Day
Clean Air day is coming up on Thursday 21 June. This year CTPC members are planning to focus on #NoIdling – encouraging drivers to switch off their engines when stationary for more than one minute. Examples include when parked, waiting, loading/unloading and where there are long delays such as at Eastgates and at complex traffic light junctions such as both ends of Brook St and in Magdelen St (both in air quality management areas)
Colchester has four declared air quality management areas where Nitrogen Dioxide levels exceed the EU legal limit. The main source of the air pollution is from motor vehicles. Air pollution is believed to have contributed to over 140 early deaths in Colchester last year alone.
Find out more about air quality in Colchester
Transport is a massive source of air pollution. Toxic gases (such as nitrogen dioxide) and particulate matter emitted by vehicle engines can cause a whole range of health problems, ranging from coughing and itchy eyes to an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer and even premature death. Children are particularly at risk with air pollution linked to low birth weight and poor lung development. The health impacts of air pollution cost the NHS around £54 billion a year.
You are not safer inside the car either. If you are sitting in stationary traffic, the air pollution in your car from the exhaust of the car in front is worse than outside your car.
Find out more about the health impacts of poor air quality
Leaving engines running while stationary is an unnecessary source of air pollution. Switching off when stationary is a simple action everyone can take that can make a big difference.
A recent study showed in areas of high air pollution due to traffic congestion, switching off engines can reduce peak concentrations in air pollution by as much as 20-30%.
CTPC members will be looking at No Idling promotions on their own sites and with their own staff and asking staff to help spread the word.
Clean Air Day offers really useful free resources to provide training, guidance and downloadable posters and flyers to support ‘No Idling’ campaigns.
If you are interested in getting involved in helping spread the message about air pollution, it’s impact and how to reduce air pollution, get in touch; or if you are a school, workplace or healthcare provider, Clean Air Day has developed free tailored downloadable action packs.
Find out more about free resources to take part in Clean Air Day 2018
If you want to know more about how you can reduce your own contribution to air pollution, have a look at the Clean Air Day website or it you want to get involved in helping make Colchester’s air safer to breathe get in touch with the local community group Clean Air Colchester
15 June – National Clean Air Day
The first ever National Clean Air Day falls on Wednesday 15th June.
Air quality has been in the media a lot recently as the evidence of the health impacts of air pollution, particularly from motorised vehicles is now very clear, with old people, unborn babies, children and those suffering from lung and heart problems the most vulnerable.
In Colchester alone 143 early deaths every year are attributable to air pollution.
As a town with an air quality problem in specific areas including the town centre (see more about Colchester’s air quality problem and the Air Quality Management Areas), we are very keen to support this initiative and the Clean Air Day organisers have provided heaps of free resources to help us.
Everyone who drives has a responsibility to contribute to reducing air pollution and there are small actions everyone can take that can contribute to making a big difference.
Please use the day to raise awareness of the causes and health impacts of air pollution and ask your colleagues to pledge to make a change to their travel behaviour on the 15th June.
With just one hour of your time, you could:
- Forward the social media message and information to your communications team and ask them to promote the day internally and externally including signing up to the Thunderclap
National Clean Air Day Social media resources
- Put the posters below up around your workplace
Fact2 – Pollution damages our hearts
Fact3 – How to avoid worst air pollution
Poster – Leave the car at home
- Share these leaflets with your colleagues
- Encourage your colleagues to pledge online to make a change on the 15th June at www.cleanairday.org.uk/pledge
There are 4 pledges to choose from
Leave my car at home
Turn off my engine whenever I can
Walk my children to school
Share tips on how to cut pollution with others.
- Promote AirTEXT a free alert service highlighting high pollution level days in Colchester so people with heart and lung conditions can take action if needed. AirTEXT alert service
If you can do a bit more?
There are lots of other ideas and resources available to help you draft a message from your chief executive or managing director, to hold an event, or talk to people about turning off their engines. Look at the resources below for further information.
There are other resource packs for schools and healthcare providers packed with ideas, posters, templates and key messages to share.
Go to the Clean Air Day website for more information.
Building Resilient Communities event
If you didn’t manage to get to Colchester Borough Council’s (CBC) Building Resilient Communities event last month, you might be interested in some of the presentations, which are now all available on the CBC website.
Of particular interest to CTPC members – was a very illuminating presentation on dispelling the myths about electric vehicles. Amongst the wealth of useful information included was the large number of electric charge points across the country, the range of electric vehicles versus the daily distance the average person in the UK travels, the savings and business benefits.
The presentation did particularly focus on the Nissan Leaf – however this does appear to be the market leader in electric cars and we were impressed with it’s other green credentials including how much of the car is made from recycled materials and that 99% of the car can actually be recycling.
So if you want to know more about electric cars and see the other presentations visit the Building Resilient Communities webpage
Other presentations that could be useful to CTPC SME’s were a couple of funding opportunities for sustainable projects (though not travel related) offered through LoCASE and The Carbon Trust Green Business fund.
Road Safety Week
This week is Road Safety Week and ‘Drive Less, Live More’ is the theme. Here are some facts that charity Brake, organisers of Road Safety Week are sharing to support Drive Less, Live More…
- Two thirds (63%) of trips are made by car, including four in 10 (40%) trips of less than two miles.
- Average walking trips per person have decreased by 27% since 1995.
- A quarter of adults in England are obese and the cost to the NHS of people being overweight is estimated at £4.2 billion a year.
- Incorporating activity like walking and cycling into everyday life is effective for losing weight.
- In 2013 there were 1,770 people killed and 22,377 people seriously injured on UK roads. The vast majority of casualties are attributable to driver error.
- Nearly half of households in England could be struggling with the costs of car ownership.
- On average a family can save £642 a year by swapping a car-based school run for walking or cycling.
- 22% of UK greenhouse gas emissions come from road transport.
- Air pollution is estimated to cause 24,000 deaths a year in the UK, half attributable to road transport.
- The number of cars is set to increase by 43% by 2035 and traffic delays by 50%
You can take part and promote Road Safety Week by:
- Tweeting about Road Safety Week, using #RoadSafetyWeek and #drivelesslivemore.
- Asking your MP to sign Early Day Motion 683 supporting the Week.
- Using the posters, banners, guides and factsheet in their action pack to publicise your activities.
- Share their interactive resource on driving less – www.roadsafetyweek.org.uk/drivelessinteractive.
- Go to www.brake.org.uk/pledge to make Brake’s Pledge and find out how to support Brake.
- Fundraise or donate to support Brake’s campaigns for safer streets and support work for bereaved and injured road crash victims.
Find out more from www.roadsafetyweek.org.uk
Bee Green!
Colchester Institute hosted it’s second Bee Green event yesterday to highlight the importance of sustainability to it’s students, staff and the public. As well as having Colchester Bee Keeping Association with them for the day highlighting the vital contribution bees make to sustainable agriculture and the environment, there was also the opportunity to take part in lots of activities.
Free bike repairs, local stalls, a farmers market, a boot camp, electric cars, walking tours, free NHS checks, fabulous food cooked by Colchester Institute’s chefs were just some of the many other attractions.
Rhonda, Colchester Institute’s CTPC rep led a lunchtime walk around the town, including a picnic on route with free water and sandwiches. Eight members of staff took part. Rhonda said ‘I am really pleased with how the walk went and I hope to make it a more regular activity’
The Colchester Institute’s bike user group offered Dr Bike health checks, checking around 20 bikes over the course of the day. Students and staff could also test their stamina, to see how far they could cycle in three minutes on a stationary bike!
Pulp Friction was there, getting many students and staff back on a bike for a chance to pedal themselves a free smoothie!
The weather held out, but at 2:30 a sudden hail storm descended with pebble sized ice as a dramatic grand finale to a good day!
All charged up and ready to go!
Colchester’s first Rapid Electric Vehicle Charger went live at the Weston Homes Community Stadium yesterday. This is one of three rapid charge points installed around Essex.
It only takes 20 – 30 minutes to fully charge, helping electric car drivers travel further. Check out the press release for further details.
Can you change one thing…?
LoveurcarColchester appeals to drivers to change one thing about how they drive.
Can you make a change?
The LoveurcarColchester website has lots of hints and tips to green up your driving as well as reduce your fuel bill. Purdy, Baz and Bob regularly blog about issues of interest to drivers. You can subscribe for blog alerts HERE.
Get in Gear for the New Year with Loveurcar Colchester
2013 is now finished, but the Loveurcar campaign will continue to support you in the New Year to make a positive difference in your driving- and your funds!
During this last year they have kept busy with campaigns such as their original Flash Mob, ‘Don’t be an Idler’, ’70p a litre’ and to top it all, a Christmas competition with a £300 prize for one lucky winner! Bringing to life the lovable characters of Purdy, Baz and Bobnoxious-always ready to give you some advice- Loveurcar has been convincing drivers to be more thoughtful about how and when they drive. If you need a quick reminder of what you can do in order to save money, be greener and keep fit have a look at their blogs– you’re bound to find something that will prove useful.
For those of you that are still working on your New Year’s resolutions, the Loveurcar project is encouraging you to think about your driving habits and see if there’s anything you can improve. Why not give it a go and try some more eco-friendly alternatives of driving this year?
25 March highlights
Fingers crossed the weather is going to improve in time for our spring promotions. This isn’t a photo from this year!
If you didn’t make it to the recent CTPC meeting, here are the highlights.
May is walking month and kicks off with the internationally renowned Jane’s Walk, more in a blog from David coming soon. For the first time the CTPC will be running its own walk, so please join us. Please share the full programme with your colleagues and encourage them to come along.
Loveurcarcolchester launches it’s ‘Short Trip – Take the Pavement’ campaign in May, you may see billboards around town. There is a £100 shoe voucher prize draw for anyone pledging to swap one of their short car journeys for their feet instead.
Walk to Work week is 13 – 17th May and the University, ECC and CBC will be holding their own walking challenges.
Check out the link, if you want a free fun walking online challenge to get your workmates competing.
On the cycling front the CTPC is planning to develop a local online Bike Challenge this year using funding obtained from ECC last year. Collaboration with the University on this project is being explored.
Cycle Colchester e-newsletters, put together by the CTPC have been revamped to include much more including infrastructure developments, monthly profile on a local cyclist, useful information, educational content as well as local events. We will send CTPC members future e-newsletters which we hope you can share with colleagues.
We still have funding to run some cycle confidence training sessions, so if you would like to do some but can’t fund it yourself, get in touch.
A ‘See Me’ campaign is planned for autumn.
We promote cycling all year round but if you want to focus on one specific week, make it Bike Week, June 15 – 23.
Buses! We haven’t done much to promote buses in recent years, we want to do more this year but first we feel we need to get more in touch with how existing bus users find the services they use.
We are putting together a bus users survey to get feedback. If you would like to send it to your bus users and we haven’t yet been in touch, please get in contact.
Results will be used to establish a better dialogue with the bus operators and to tailor our marketing approach.
Survey results and ECC accreditation Several of our members took part in our two yearly travel survey last year. We are still doing the write up, but response rates were significantly higher than in previous years and results were positive. Congratulations to seven of our members, who have gained Essex County Council business Travel Plan accreditation this year. A blog specifically on the survey results and accreditation will be coming soon.
New ideas to pursue Finally, we discussed developing an online sustainable travel challenge which wasn’t just confined to cycling that could be used by CTPC members to encourage travel change. We will be looking for funding sources to pursue this, but will also see how it could be integrated on the back of the Cycle Challenge.
Purdy’s Christmas competition
Purdy’s back with a Christmas competition.
She is so pleased with how much she has saved on her fuel bill simply by making a few easy changes to how she drives, that she wants to give someone a nice Christmas present!
So she has launched a Christmas competition to share with everyone how she has reduced her fuel bill.
There are £200 Love2shop vouchers for Christmas up for grabs at www.loveurcarcolchester.co.uk plus you can pick up her fuel saving tips.
The competition closes Friday 14 November at 09:00 and is open to those who are over 17 and live, work, study or spend leisure time in Colchester