Green Guardian: Campaigning for the environment in south London

The Green Guardian campaign:

Entering its fourth year, the largest environmental awareness campaign in south London, the Green Guardian initiative, is a unique partnership between Newsquest South London, the leading media company in the area, south London borough councils and commercial businesses and organisations.

In its first three years the project has grown rapidly to cover seven boroughs in south west London through the Your Local Guardian and Richmond Twickenham Times series of newspapers covering Sutton, Wandsworth, Merton, Croydon, Kingston, Richmond and Hounslow. In south east London the campaign is run through the News Shopper title across four boroughs - Bromley, Bexley, Greenwich and Lewisham.

The extraordinary impact of the project was recognised in its second year when British Gas became headline sponsors bringing with it energy expertise as well as financial support.

2008 saw the campaign really grow in terms of reach and brand predominance across south London. Outstanding final awards ceremonies were held for south west London finals in November at Epsom Downs Racecourse and for south east London in February (2009) at Indigo2 at the O2. Both evenings were inspiring and informative bringing together those people and organisations who otherwise may not meet yet all who share the same motivation – protecting our environment.

Last year was also the year that we expanded into the last south west London borough – Hounslow, launched the campaign in our Richmond Twickenham Times series and gained the support of HSBC.

Three core elements:

There are core three elements to the Green Guardian:

1. Green Guardian pages run in paper every week of the campaign across 11 south London titles* reaching approx. 1.8 million readers every week

2. The Green Guardian website - www.greenguardian.co.uk– easy to use and informative, the website has great potential and is linked to our core paper websites which reach millions of people every week. Online editions of our papers are also featured on our entire portfolio of sites, a great read in an environmentally friendly format!

3. The Green Guardian awards – covering all aspects of the local community, winners from individual borough awards go through to regional gala finals attended in total by over 450 people.

2009

2009 presents us with a challenge – how do we keep the campaign fresh and move it forward in a way which will engage with even more people? Some of the developments planned for this year include:

- More proactive partnerships with council partners on campaign-led initiatives

- Your Borough Your World - a photography competition for those of you who want to show the places across South London that you want to protect from climate change

- The regional finals for south west and south east London will combine to create a South London final awards evening with 500+ people attending and which will provide an event with even more reach. We are also looking to revamp the event to include a showcase element which will give people and organisations a chance to creatively shout about what they are doing and to share ideas.

- A revamp of the Green Guardian website to make it more relevant and accessible

- More partnerships with major environmental campaigns including Together.com, UK Aware, Passion4thePlanet and London Sustainability Exchange.

- Sponsorship of the Catlin Arctic Survey, which will for the first time measure the depth of the ice at the North Pole and which will enable our readers/visitors to follow the exploration teams progress.

- The introduction of two patrons for the campaign – Polar Explorer Pen Hadow and ex-BBC weathergirl Helen Young.

- Use the campaign to show individuals and businesses that in tough economic times, taking steps to reduce your environmental output is vital to not only save time and money but also... our world.