How you can help
- Are you thinking of making the switch to an electric car, check out the council's Co-Wheels scheme
- The council works in partnership with Furniture Matters, a charity which collects bulk furniture items and reuses via a shop. If items are not suitable for sale they are stripped back to components and recycled. Check out Furniture Matters or book a bulky item collection using our Bulky Matters service
- Organising a community cleanup is a great way to show that you and your group care about your local environment. It will also encourage other local residents to take pride in their neighbourhoods
- You can get your garden waste collected, sign up our garden waste collection
- Have you considered composting in your back yard? Check out Get Composting or if you prefer community composting get in touch with Food Futures who have community composting coming up as part of their Closing Loops programme
- Whether you want to get your hands in the earth and plant trees, raise awareness about trees in your local community, or simply be the eyes, ears and voice for the trees on your street, then you have what it takes to be a volunteer Tree Warden. Find out how to become a Tree Warden
- Make a positive change with the following recycling schemes:
- Batteries - How and where to recycle your used batteries
- Plastic pots, tubs and trays
- Small electrical items
- Tetrapak cartons
- Textiles
- Freegle groups
- Wheelie bins are now available for household recyclables
- Free tips and advice in our Little Book of Warm - A guide to help you save energy, save money, stay healthy and improve the environment
- Residents of the Lancaster district who are concerned about pavement weeds are being asked not to spray weed killer due to the potential harmful effects it can have on the environment.
- As winter beckons and the temperature starts to drop, we naturally turn to heating our homes. Whether putting the heating or the log burner to travelling and driving- many of our daily activities result in polluting emissions. But just making a few small changes can help to reduce local air pollution. The air quality in the district is improving on the whole, but in the winter months there is a rise in the common air pollutant PM2.5, mainly due to the use of domestic burning of fires and wood burners used to heat the home. As with your heating, where turning the temperature down can make a small difference to climate change, just tweaking the length of time you have your log burner on while using good quality dried wood can help to improve this and the local air quality. People who use woodburning stoves/solid fuels are being urged to consider the damaging effects they can have on human health and the environment before lighting up.
- You can check out the council's webpage with Energy Efficiency Advice as a starting point if you are interested in how to reduce your energy bills
- Wasting food feeds climate change and each year UK households throw away 4.5 million tonnes of food that could have been eaten! There’s loads you can do to cut the amount you waste this #FoodWasteActionWeek – check out all the tips from Love Food Hate Waste - Community at lovefoodhatewaste.com/fwaw.
- See how you can join in and help monitor the health of our pollinators UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (PoMS)
Each of us can:
- Insulate our homes
- Replace lights with the most efficient bulbs (e.g. LEDs)
- Replace old boilers with energy efficient alternatives
- Buy green electricity
- Use public transport for more journeys
- Buy local and seasonal
