Net Zero Heroes

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Rod has volunteered as a Master Composter since 2009. He has spent more than 4,000 hours educating and supporting thousands of residents across  Leicestershire to reduce their carbon footprint through composting their organic waste at home.

Rod is very keen on promoting home composting to the public. He offers composting workshops and talks to garden clubs, allotment societies, community groups and schools across Leicestershire. He is also active on social media and through his webpage Carry On Composting where he provides composting advice.

Rod established a composting demonstration site at the Stokes Wood Allotments. His tireless effort in promoting and supporting composting was also recognised by North West Leicestershire District Council when he was awarded the Green Footprints Award in 2011.

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Judy was a keen gardener and allotment holder before applying to become a Master Composter in 2010. Since then, Judy has also volunteered as an Environmental Action Volunteer and has given more than 500 hours of her time engaging with the public and supporting local residents across Leicestershire to reduce their environmental impact and to start composting. 

Judy said: “Creating your own compost is one of the easiest and cheapest ways of contributing to soil health. It is a great way for all of us to do our own little bit for the planet.”

In 2020, Judy became one of the founding members of Sustainable Harborough Community, a local group boasting more than 200 members that aims to educate local people about the environmental challenges we face and the need for a positive local response to increase sustainability.

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Fix it Group 23 is a volunteer-led group that runs monthly repair cafes in Mountsorrel. The group aims to reduce unnecessary waste going to landfill and save residents money while providing an opportunity to bring the local community together. 

Set up by the current Chairman, John Fitzgerald in 2023, the group currently has more than 20 volunteers and has successfully repaired in excess of 600 items including clothes, soft toys, small electrical items and more. 

Members of Fix it Group 23 are also happy to share their experience establishing a repair cafe and provide advice to other groups seeking to establish their own repair cafes.

More details of the amazing work the Fix it Group 23 do can be found on Fix it Group 23’s webpage.

Image: John Fitzgerald, Paul Worth and Joanne Liversidge celebrating Fix It Group 23’s first anniversary.

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The Charnwood Eco Hub is a not-for-profit Community Hub based in Loughborough that aims to encourage and help residents across Charnwood in adopting eco-friendly practices. 

The Eco Hub offers a Scrap Store where surplus and waste materials from businesses and residents are made available for creative use.  The Makerspace is where residents from all age groups and skill levels can access tools, equipment and resources to create and develop their skills, and they host a Library of Things where residents can borrow items such as tools, gardening equipment and kitchen appliances rather than purchasing themselves. 

The group has had major success in reducing waste and ensuring residents can live more sustainably while saving them money.
 
The group also organises an annual Sustainability Fair held in September to highlight green initiatives, promote a wide range of local sustainability and eco groups and encourage collaboration within their community.

More information about Charnwood Eco Hub can be found on the Charnwood Eco Hub’s website.

Image: Emma Ward, Clive Bagley and Sarah Goode from the Charnwood Eco Hub.

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Kim is the lead volunteer for the community fridge at the Eco Village in Market Harborough. The community fridge provides residents with free access to food that would have otherwise been wasted.

Kim is passionate about reducing the environmental impact of food waste while serving her community. With the support from a team of amazing volunteers, the community fridge saves around 2.5 tonnes of food per month from going to landfill unnecessarily.  

Over the past 12 months while training a dedicated group volunteers, Kim has also played a key role in expanding the fridge area to accommodate a larger volume of rescued food. Kim keeps the 1,100 members of the Community Fridge Facebook Page updated on when deliveries are made to the Eco Village.

The Community Fridge accepts donations from local supermarkets, food businesses and households. Currently, they depend on volunteers to collect the food and are eager to welcome more volunteers to join their team!

Bruce is a flood and tree warden. He co-founded the Harborough Woodland Community Volunteers – a not-for-profit community group passionate about planting trees to increase biodiversity and reduce the risk of flooding in Leicestershire and across UK. Their aim is to increase the 3 to 4% woodland coverage in Market Harborough and beyond.

Bruce and his volunteers have been working passionately with communities, schools and landowners to ‘green’ Leicestershire with beautiful trees since 2020. They have planted nearly 50,000 free trees in three counties and helped 30 schools to improve their local environment and inspire the young generation to take positive actions for the environment. Their tireless efforts have been recognised by the Royal Coronation Champions Award 2023 and the National River Champions Award 2022.

When supporting the community, the volunteers enjoy learning from other champions and building trust by helping related community landowners at no cost. The volunteering group currently has over 800 supporters, including volunteers of all ages. To find out more about the volunteering group, check out Harborough Woodland Community Volunteers | Facebook and Harbrorough Woodland.

Debbie is a passionate, creative and environmentally conscious individual. As a supervisor of the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre and a creative practitioner, she has developed an environmental programme to link in with the site’s history (roman and medieval) as well as the country park’s natural history. Our environmental efforts | Bosworth Battlefield includes the environmental initiatives which Debbie has been involved in.

Being one of the Green Champions, Debbie created artwork out of recycled materials to reduce waste and prevent pollution, including papier mâché bowls and decorative plates from discarded magazines and paper.

Debbie arranged the first Heritage swap event for the Heritage Centre, in which visitors donated old and unused items. Debbie hopes to inspire colleagues at other museum sites to hold heritage swaps for their local communities, which would help to reduce waste and give the old items a new life. She has attended museum staff events to share her ideas and encourage others with her knowledge and experience.

The Cultural Youth Forum is a platform provided by Cultural Leicestershire to empower young people to share their views. In 2024, over 60 young volunteers created amazing artworks and exhibitions in museums and libraries to share their feelings on climate change and net zero with their communities.

The young volunteers co-created an environmental survey to encourage their peers to think of ideas to protect our environment. They created an amazing net zero zine and designed some eco-characters and costumes to facilitate conversation about climate change. They also designed some banners out of recycled materials to educate people the environmental impact of plastic and fast fashion.

Their artworks have been seen by thousands of visitors and they hope that these will help people to understand their environmental impact, inspire them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and encourage them to create a more sustainable environment together!

For more information about the cultural youth forum, please visit Cultural Youth Forum | Culture Leicestershire