Make a Difference this May!
Have you thought about how you or your business can make an environmental difference this year and the types of events you can get involved with?
There are lots of Environmental Days and Dates now to choose from, and there are three happening this May that are very simple to take part in. Starting with ‘No Mow May’ which requires you to lock away your lawnmower for the whole month and let the wild flowers blossom on your lawn. Next is World Bee Day on 20 May which aims to raise awareness around the vital role played by bees in keeping people and planet healthy. And last is Every Flower Counts Day on 31 May which comes at the end of No Mow May, and aims to monitor and record the types of flowers in our lawns, to calculate the nectar scores.
If you haven’t heard of these Days and Dates before and have no idea what they are about then don’t feel bad as you are not alone!
In very simple terms the mission of these types of Environmental Days and Dates is to help raise awareness, educate, and activate the environmental movement worldwide to help drive positive action for our planet.
There are hundreds of Environmental Days and events happening online or in person, all over the world throughout the year, that individuals and businesses can get involved in. The three mentioned above happen to fall in the month of May and are all linked through ‘bees and pollination’.
So why focus on these ‘Bee’ days?
Bees and other pollinators are vital to our ecosystem.
Did you know that 1 out of every 3 mouthfuls of our food depends on pollinators? Almost 90% of wild plants and 75% of leading global crops depend on animal pollination.
Bees are different to other pollinators such as hoverflies, wasps, butterflies, and beetles, as unlike these other pollinators, which only visit flowers to feed themselves, bees gather enough pollen to feed themselves and enough pollen to stock their nests, carrying more pollen overall, which makes them far more effective pollinators.
A fact we recently learned is that certain bee species have an affinity with certain plants, and without each other, neither would exist!
Bees are so important for a healthy environment, but our bees are in trouble. There is growing concern about their declining numbers worldwide. Their decline is linked to the use of pesticides, loss of habitat, loss of food sources, and climate breakdown. Their decline is a clear warning sign that the natural environment is not in as good a shape as it should be…
Taking part…
In practical terms it is often hard to know how to actually make a difference, but even the mindset shift in just thinking about how to take part in No Mow May, World Bee Day, and Every Flower Counts Day makes a difference.
Commit to locking away your lawnmower for No Mow May individually, as well as encouraging it for everyone across your business, and if there is no lawn to ‘Not Mow’ then look into the types of flowers you can plant now, even on a windowsill, to encourage the bees ahead of May…
World Bee Day provides an opportunity to promote actions that protect and enhance pollinators and their habitats, improve their abundance and diversity, and support the sustainable development of beekeeping. As a business you can now sponsor your own bee hive! You don’t have to be based in the countryside for this and you’d be surprised how easy it is to do, and how much honey ‘city’ bees can produce!
Individually you can look into planting all year round bee friendly gardens and window boxes, use ‘peat free’ compost to help protect their habitats, and put away the pesticides.
Every Flower Counts Day allows us to monitor and record the flowers in our uncut lawns, and by submitting the data to Plantlife (the organisers), it helps them calculate the declining nectar scores. Counting the flowers is simple and easy and only takes a few minutes, you don’t have to count every flower in an entire lawn! Log into nomowmay.plantlife.org.uk for their simple flower count instructions and stop mowing!
Both individually and as a business you can make an environmental difference this year… Just by thinking about and planning how you can take part in the above May events means you are already having a positive environmental impact and creating a positive ripple effect…
What are you waiting for?
For more green tips and inspiration take a look at our other blog posts, or pop over to Instagram and LinkedIn and check out @achievinggreenness where we provide you with the motivation, evidence, and tools you may need to become greener.
If you are a business looking for help to become greener then get in touch, we offer a range of services from Green Effectiveness Reviews, ESG design and implementation, through to obtaining REAL green accreditations and ISO certifications. We provide bespoke Green packages for all your requirements.
