Earth Champions 'Outstanding' Award

At the recently held Earth Champions awards ceremony in Bristol, ModCell and Craig White of ModCell were presented with an Earth Champions 'Outstanding' award.

Read Bristol Post article below:

PEOPLE who are quietly making Bristol a better place to live have been recognised with international awards. After a year of research, preparation and nominations, the Earth Champions 2015 were announced at Bristol Zoo Gardens last night.

Those named as Outstanding Champions ranged from huge organisations including the BBC and the Soil Association, to one-man businesses and charities.

The Earth Champions Foundation has been celebrating local people's hard work and success in reducing humanity's impact on the environment for nearly 15 years.

The programme has run in countries including Switzerland and Australia, and Nelson Mandela had a helping hand in its launch.

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Bristol was chosen as the first UK city to host the project.

More than 80 people were nominated to receive an Earth Champions Award by others in their communities.

Last night, they were all recognised with certificates, and the most inspiring were given the title "Outstanding Champions".

Helping to give out the awards was Inger Andersen, the director general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

She has previously worked for both the World Bank and the UN.

She said: "Every move matters. Anyone who is campaigning for a cleaner environment gets our backing. The work of people in small communities is every bit as important as big businesses. Conserving the environment is about building relationships.

"We are living in a time where what we do as a species will determine the very nature of the planet as know it."

Outstanding winners included Modcell, UWE, Bristol University, Grow Bristol, the Bristol Bike Project, Lifecycle, the Severn Project CIC and Edible Bristol.

Awards were given in eight categories: air, built environment, water, transport, waste management, energy, wellbeing and biodiversity.

The aim of the Earth Champions Foundation is to create a legacy in each city it visits and put people in touch with each other who are doing similar work.

Founder Fiona Mathews said: "It seems like a crazy thing to go out looking for ordinary people, but we have found them and this works in every city we have taken it to. "I think it will work in every city in the world."

Sir Crispin Tickell, an academic and environmentalist, has been involved with the charity for 12 years and spoke to those gathered at the award ceremony. He said: "The Earth Champions project keeps getting bigger and growing. This year we had a very talented crop of nominees. "We have all got a contribution to make and this charity works from the bottom up, not the top down, which is what makes it so special."