How we can help songbirds this winter

Written by: Georgia Dossis

I’ve grown up to see my mum treat her garden like a small arboretum and get really excited about her little sparrows that come and eat at the fat balls that she puts out, but I didn’t think anything other than it’s a bit of wildlife in the back garden.

Songbirds actually help to keep the balance between plants, herbivores, predators, and prey by dispersing seeds. They also react quickly to changes in in environment and have been proven to act as early warning signs for extreme weather conditions, from tracking their migration patterns.

Scientists are looking at the gaps within their knowledge about the effects of climate change and are finding that more than half of the UK’s songbirds are threatened or already in decline. Their research is ongoing but, in the meantime, there are ways that we can help them, especially during the winter months where their habitat becomes a lot harder for them to survive.

Feeding:

You don’t need a fancy bird feeder to feed birds (unless you want one). Easy and ecofriendly alternatives to this are using either a round clean bin lid or upcycling a plastic bottle into a bird feeder. This can even become a fun activity with the kids or family.

Seeds and fat balls are popular amongst all birds, you can also use leftovers such as fruit cake or mince pies, dried fruit, unsalted nuts, or apples and pears that are past their best.

Placing some seed or a fat ball under bushes / around any tree’s you may have for any of the shy birds out there.

Keeping bird feeders out of reach of pets.

If you don’t have a garden that you can do this in, hanging baskets or a bird feeder outside your window can still be a great way to feed birds in your area, it also adds to a lovely view.

Drinking water/ Bathing:

There are again smaller ways that you can provide water for birds without needing a bird bath. For example, a bowl of water, making sure that it’s as full as it can be to ensure that it doesn’t freeze/ it takes longer to freeze, or making sure that the bowl has a dark surface to keep heat in as much as possible.

If you do have a bird bath (the same as with feeders) ensure that they are clean when you can. Refrain from putting any salts/ detergents in as this can be poisonous to birds. But making sure that it is hygienic so that it is free from bacteria as much as possible.

Housing:

Birds often use artificial bird boxes during the summer and spring to rear their young and stay safe. During the winter months birds use these as warm and shelter from bad weathers. If you don’t have a bird box you can always make one as an arts and crafts afternoon, either out of recycled material or unused woods. Also making sure that you don’t add a perch as this can encourage predators.

Don’t rush to cut back on your gardening too. If there’s no bird box, birds will often use hedges, holes in trees or crannies in rocks to build their nests for the winter.

There are so many more ways to help birds during the winter, the above are the most minimal things that you can do to help from home. It’s all about keeping up to date with conservation issues and acting on this where we can to maintain and potentially grow our ecosystem.

Green Terminology

Written by: Craig Arnott

As a business committed to being Net Zero by 2030 (ambitious – maybe, unrealistic? – we’re aware), but we’ll be sharing lots of details on our progress as well as providing useful hints for those joining us on the journey in the months and years ahead.

But right now, 3 years into our process, we thought it would be helpful to take a step back and look at some of the terminology that seems to dominate the Net Zero conversation.

So let’s start with that main term itself…

Net Zero

When businesses, governments and scientists talk about Net Zero, there may not be absolute consensus on what it looks like and how we’ll get there, but there is a general agreement on what it means.

Net Zero is the result of balancing the amount of carbon added to the atmosphere against the amount of carbon removed. It will be achieved by a combination of reducing the number of carbon emissions (less polluting technology, etc.) and increasing the level of carbon removal (by planting more trees, etc.).

When this is done right, the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere will be ‘Net Zero’ (or even better, we might even achieve overall carbon reduction).

Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3

You’ll be hearing a lot more about the three scopes used to measure progress toward Net Zero. They are the mechanism used to measure organisations’ greenhouse gas emissions, and in order to achieve true Net Zero, action must be taken to reduce all three.

Scope 1 emissions are those from sources that are directly owned or controlled by the organisation. The amount of petrol or diesel used by fleet vehicles is a good example of a Scope 1 emission.

Scope 2 emissions take this one step further, covering the indirect emissions caused by a business when, for example, it purchases and uses energy. Using that fleet example again, if an organisation were to use electric vehicles instead of petrol ones, the emissions would be produced in the generation of the electricity used to power them. These are Scope 2 emissions – outside of the direct control of the business but still their responsibility.

Scope 3 emissions are in many ways the most difficult element in achieving Net Zero status. These emissions are neither produced by the business nor the activities or assets they own or control. Instead, they exist elsewhere in the supply chain. Think of – using Dene as an example – the emissions created in the manufacture and transport of the Products we supply.

It can be very difficult to determine, never mind control Scope 3 emissions, but if all businesses take the journey to Net Zero together, one organisation’s Scope 3 emissions will be another’s Scope 1 or 2 and so on.

Carbon Neutral

This is a term that has been around for some time, and at first glance would appear to be the same as Net Zero. Like Net Zero, carbon neutrality aims to strike a balance between emitting carbon into the atmosphere and absorbing carbon from it.

There is a distinction though.

Generally, ‘carbon neutrality’ can be achieved through offsetting. That’s the act of participating in or investing in schemes designed to make equivalent carbon reductions elsewhere. That might involve, for example, investing in tree planting or green energy schemes. In theory that could mean that a business could become carbon neutral without making any reductions to the carbon it produces.

Net Zero places a much greater emphasis on proactive carbon reduction, where the main priority for a business is to reduce its own emissions, using offsetting as a secondary option.

Carbon footprint

You’re probably familiar with this term, but what does it mean? Carbon footprint can be understood as the total amount of carbon dioxide that is emitted through the activity of businesses or individuals. That includes everything from travelling by car or plane to using a kettle or the electricity used in a manufacturing plant.

Buying local produce, reducing plastic use, reducing unnecessary journeys, and even turning down the heating are all examples of the ways that households and businesses can reduce their carbon footprint.

Greenwashing

Greenwashing is essentially the marketing or PR spin that businesses dishonestly place on their products or services to capitalise on the growing interest in sustainability. The claims they make tend to paint the business in a good light even though little to nothing is actually being achieved.

A business may, for example, claim that their product uses ‘recycled materials’, and while this may be true to an extent, those materials may make up a very small percentage of the product itself. Such exaggerated claims can mislead customers into thinking better of the business.

It is important that any claims are backed up by evidence and action. Where this doesn’t exist, customers should be wary of the claims being made.

Decarbonisation

This term is generally used in a wide-reaching way, referring to the process of reducing carbon emissions resulting from human activity. It is a term favoured by businesses and governments to refer to the holistic efforts to reduce or remove global CO2 emissions.

Why we should be composting

Written by: Georgia Dossis

By now you’ll have seen all the headlines and David Attenborough documentaries that hit us with the hard truths about becoming carbon neutral before 2030. There are so many ways to do this, whether it be using green energy to power your house, recycling, cutting down on your journeys in the car or even driving an electric vehicle, the list is endless.

But one really easy way in which we can reduce our carbon footprint is composting.

Composting is the natural process of recycling organic matter, such as food waste, teabags, leaves and food peelings.

What we don’t think about is that when you throw food waste away it ends up in landfills. Every 100 pounds of food waste that goes into landfills produces 8.3 pounds of methane, which in turn releases methane into the atmosphere trapping in heat and contributing to global warming.

This makes up for 8% of greenhouse gas emissions. It’s said that if every household in the UK composted their food waste rather than throwing it away it would have the same effect on greenhouse gases as planting 640,000 trees.

I won’t lie when I hear composting, I hear green thumb, gardener, or farmer. But you can do this in every environment whether you have a big garden, small garden, farm, yard or flat. Little kitchen compost bins are easily attainable and easy to use to turn your food to mulch and if you don’t have an arboretum to use this on, you can share it with neighbor’s or local farms through app’s like ShareWaste, which find people around you that you can give your compost to so that they can use it for fertilizer.

Whether you keep the little bin in the kitchen or outside is completely at your discretion but for such an easy way to reduce your carbon footprint, it’s definitely worth thinking about!

Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust Partnership with Dene Healthcare

Written by: The Dene Team

Known collectively to their customers as the ‘Dene Team’ they set up a sub-group of particularly environmentally conscious staff members called ‘The Green Team’ to measure, justify and reduce their carbon emissions to net zero by 2030!

Dene Healthcare has now reduced its total footprint in measured emissions by 72% and over 90% of their staff are now certified as carbon literate.

While determined to achieve their ambitious target in such a short period without ‘off-setting’ the ‘Green Team’ at Dene chose to partner with the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust, firstly as they are a proud Yorkshire based Company and secondly to further support what should be a global, combined effort!

To date Dene Healthcare have committed to supporting the planting of over 1750 trees and plan to invest and contribute further in 2024.

Gareth Fox, Operations Manager and lead of Dene’s Green Team, said:

“We are delighted to have been accepted as a partner of the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust!  The work they do is truly inspiring and motivational!  It has become our ambition at Dene Healthcare to try and mimic the dedication and impact they have on our planet!  Climate change is a global emergency and while no one can resolve the issue by themselves we believe establishing and aligning ourselves with organisations such as the YDMT is a positive step towards building improved climate conscious networks for the future!”

We’re delighted that Dene Healthcare has linked up with us to ensure that even more native woodlands and hedgerows can be planted, as well as enabling more people to connect with nature, to care for our woodlands and boost their wellbeing.