This week it’s Climate Change Week, a week for reflection, innovation and sharing of ideas. A week to celebrate the small successes and plan for even bigger ones as we work together to protect our environment for the generations to come.
Over the course of this week we’ll be sharing some of things our teams, the children in our centres and their families are doing to make a difference.
Today we’re showcasing our Dundee service. Our team in Dundee are proactive in protecting the climate through recycling, efficient use of energy and careful consideration of the impact their actions have on the world around us.
Recently, whilst reflecting on what other actions they could take, their thoughts turned to the weekly food shop. Our Services Manager, Lesley Tait, tells us more about how FCSS Dundee have changed their shopping habits and the impact this small change has had.
“Here in Dundee we are making small but steady changes. Let’s be honest, how many of you get your shopping delivered! It’s so much more convenient, it’s easier and it’s quicker…but ask yourself who for? and do those benefits really make it the right thing to do?
Due to the flexibility of our service getting the shopping delivered to us was much easier. We have different children attending every week, it’s hard to get consistency in the items we are buying if we shop locally. It would, it could, but what… I have heard it all before! If you think about it hard enough you can always find reasons why something won’t work, BUT we’re all about doing things the right way and we weren’t convinced ordering a shopping delivery was right for us.
The thing is our children were missing out on so much due to us trying to make our lives easier. Changes needed to happen and they have!
When getting the shopping delivered, we got plastic containers, items with hardly any use by date and food swaps that we did not ask for. How is any of this helping the environment? We don’t want the plastic packaging from our shopping contributing to the amount that is currently in our seas and landfills, we don’t to be throwing away food that has passed its use by date before we can consume it and we don’t want our children to be learning unsustainable habits.
Our children now go shopping on a Monday morning, and can pick their own fruit and vegetables using environmentally friendly packaging. The children can walk to the shops, and are learning at every stage of their outing. We look for Fair Trade products, we recycle our food and have reduced our food wastage.
We also work with Fareshare who give us surplus food for our families. It is collected twice a week from a supermarket and we leave it just inside our front door so that our families can pick up what they wish on their way out the door. The surplus food being taken by our families is not always caused by hunger or lack of food. Some people used the food bank to free up income that they would otherwise have needed to spend on food.”
Here’s what one mum using our service told us; “I was slightly nervous and a little bit embarrassed when taking the food. It was nice when you walked in to the building it was just there for you to take, there was no one there to judge me at all. No one will ever know the difference this has made to me and my family.”
We’re sure you’ll all agree the small change made by Lesley and her team has had a very big impact… We’re ambitious and want to make a difference through all of our actions. Watch this space to see where our aspirations lead us to next.
