Highlights
- All staff are part of the green team.
- All team meetings are green team meetings.
- Hold annual Green Team Days in the local nature reserve.
- Installed Green Boards to inform staff and customers on progress.
- Share best practice with other centres.
Edinburgh Leisure is a charity that manages and develops sport and leisure services on behalf of the City of Edinburgh Council. With a turnover of almost £30 million, over 800 employees and around 5 million customer visits per year, Edinburgh Leisure is the biggest club in town dedicated to getting people active to protect their health and well-being.
The Green Team Award rewards teams that have recognised the importance of working as a team to deliver environmental improvements. Green teams are cross-functional groups of employees who come together to educate, inspire and empower employees around sustainability. They identify and implement specific solutions to help their organisation operate in a more environmentally sustainable fashion.
Edinburgh Leisure is to be commended for the wide range of initiatives that the Green Team have put in place. It was apparent that the team are looking to continue to improve their environmental performance with on-going initiatives including encouraging sustainable transport for customers.
The judges were impressed with the corporate green plan that sets out a framework with all the venues identifying how they can tackle their own environmental impacts. A competition element is introduced between the venues to provide incentives to achieve the targets. The Craiglockhart site is the best performing of the 30 sites that Edinburgh Leisure owns. They identify the empowerment of staff as key to the success of the venue.
Within the Craiglockhart site every team meeting is a “green team” meeting. The judges were particularly impressed with the enthusiasm and obvious pride in what they do as an inclusive team, along with the recognition that well-being is related to green activities.
The judges recognised a wide range of initiatives that had been implemented by the Green Team at Craiglockhart including:
- Initiatives to decrease CO2 from electricity which resulted in an 8% reduction 2015-16.
- Increased recycling from 30% in 2012 to over 80% in 2016.
- Recycling also includes food, ink cartridges, batteries, tennis balls and clothes.
- Removed plastic cups from their gym and promoted the use of reusable plastic bottles, saving 250,000 cups pa.
- Steam cleaner to reduce chemical usage.
- Energy efficient hand dryers saving energy and paper.
- Green inductions for all new staff.
A strong community engagement is in place to promote sustainable initiatives. The team holds annual Green Team Days in the local nature reserve. Projects included planting fruit trees and a wild flower garden, dredging and clearing the pond and weeding out alien species.
They are committed to share best practices with other centres as well as with their staff and customers. They have installed Green Boards to inform staff and customers on progress. Following a huge customer interest in the local birds in the pond in the local nature reserve they created a display and organised an RSPB stall.
Fiona Douglas, Energy and Sustainability Officer, Edinburgh Leisure: “Edinburgh Leisure is delighted to have won the first ever Green Team Vibes Award! This award is a reflection of all the hard work put in by the whole team at Craiglockhart Leisure and Tennis Centre. The aim of our team was to reduce our impact on the environment but we did not foresee that there would be so many additional benefits. Our hope is to inspire more organisations to create a Green Team and start making a difference.”