Green Unison week 13th – 20th September | North Yorkshire Local Government

Hello Green UNISON Network! – Welcome to our 6^th newsletter of 2024.

Get ready for Green UNISON Week 13^th to 20^th September
Green UNISON Week is a chance to raise awareness of green issues nationally and locally, plan activities to encourage and enable members to get more active and to celebrate all the things they are already doing in support of the green agenda – not just in work but anywhere.

As well as launching our new bargaining guide: Bargaining on Green Issues in the Workplace, on September 13^th (see more detail below) we’ll also be promoting some national engagement opportunities:

Get Involved – Citizen Scientists starting 6^th – 12^th September just ahead of Green Week.
This year we are promoting citizen scientist initiatives up and down the UK where people are encouraged to enter their own local information, or samples, on a climate change related issue to help gather important mass data that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Importantly, this is not work that replaces other work done by our members.
We would encourage individual members or branches to engage if they can. See below for more details of the projects we are supporting before, during, and after this Green UNISON week.

6^th -12^th September only – ahead of Green week

UK-wide: The Big River Watch
Promoted by the Government, in partnership with the Rivers Trust, The Big River watch happens twice a year and is an opportunity to take part in a simple citizen science activity that helps build a picture of river health across the UK. Click below to find out more.

UK Big River Watch

Other Climate Scientist opportunities or recommended activities for Green week and beyond…

England: Environment Agency general citizen scientist web pages

Environment Agency citizen scientist web pages

Scotland: – Help monitor rainfall in your area to help the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) to support their weather and flood forecasting

Rainfall monitoring in Scotland

Cymru / Wales: caring for Welsh Rivers – offers various ways you can get involved to support clean rivers in Wales from water sampling to pollution reporting

Caring for Welsh Rivers

Northern Ireland: Northern Ireland has had some large citizen scientist projects over the last three years and is about to embark on more in 2025 but is currently in-between national citizen scientist projects right now. However, in discussion with our regional climate contact it has been agreed that members and branches in NI might want to engage on the issue of monitoring indoor air pollution using the new Trade Union Clean Air Network (TUCAN) guidance attached below – if you or your branch want to get involved with this potential project you can email me on the link at the bottom of this newsletter and I will forward your details to the regional co-ordinator.

Find out more about the TUCAN indoor air pollution guide

Climate Anxiety workshop: 12:30 – 2pm Thursday 19^th September
Understanding Climate Anxiety
Join us for a 90 minute webinar to find out more about climate anxiety and how you can support yourself and others to turn fear into hope, and hope into action.

Discover more about the issues of climate anxiety, who it affects, how to support others and how to care for ourselves as we face our future on a warmer planet.
This is a new and unique learning experience and a topic we are exploring together as a trade union with members.

Register here

Run your own local Green UNISON activity
There are many things that you could do to locally mark the week – here are just a few ideas.
Hold a Green UNISON event
You could run a lunchtime stall in the canteen, show a film or arrange a talk. Why not invite a speaker from a nearby environmental campaigning organisation to come along? Ask people to make personal – or team – green pledges, such as committing to create less waste, to recycling targets, green office practices (less printing, switching from plastic to cardboard folders etc) anything green.
Run a green workplace training activity
Talk to your UNISON learning rep and look into running a lunchtime activity session for green reps and members who’d like to learn more.
Run a green survey
Ask your friends and colleagues for ideas on how to ‘green up’ your workplace. Get people involved and offer a prize or raffle.
Find out what your employer is doing to reduce their environmental impact
Ask your employer to share this information with UNISON and consider how you could bring climate change commitments onto the bargaining agenda.
Find out if your UNISON branch has an environment rep
If not, encourage your branch and any interested members to get involved and become green reps.
A downloadable poster and leaflet are now available here and here respectively.
Set up a local green network
You can find other colleagues who share your concerns about climate change and let Green UNISON Week be your springboard into starting a new green union network where you work that can link to the regional and national networks for support and to share ideas.
Promote our Green UNISON Week workshop and activities to your colleagues

New Climate Emergency Bargaining guide.

Look out for our new toolkit for engaging with your employer on climate change, how it affects your workplace and the services our members deliver. Bargaining on Green issues in the Workplace is a step-by-step guide covering the basics but also guiding you to get fully engaged in a partnership approach with your employer on all things climate change. This will be launched on the first day of Green UNISON week and will be an online reviewable and updatable document on our website.

UNISON Resources

New sustainable Green UNISON promotional items are now available – use them to promote your green activity!

NOTE: There are 5 items in the Green UNISON range:

Bamboo Fan
Sturdy Bamboo Cutlery set in recycled cotton pouch
Bamboo pens
Recycled cotton swim bag
Factor 30 sun balm stick for face and body

These new items are available from our usual suppliers (TC UNISON) – you’ll need to specify that you want the ‘Green UNISON’ logo when you order and prices vary depending on order size so think about ordering in bulk for multiple Green UNISON activities – or maybe club together with other branches to make it cheaper!

TC UNISON website

Talk to us we’d love to hear from you about any green activity in your branch – just drop us a line at Policy@unison.co.uk

As ever we hope you can get involved with Green UNISON in any way you can!
If you’d like to find out more about the work that UNISON is doing to make our public services greener, you can head over to our website.