Warwickshire County Council’s Road Safety Team have worked with Clean Air Warwickshire over the past few months to develop a clean air pack, which offers information and guidance to primary schools throughout the county.

The digital pack has been emailed to primary schools and includes a range of information and resources, including an idling cars pledge, social media post templates, practical ideas and tips about the Living Streets campaign, and details about the Clean Air Day competition. Those wishing to obtain a copy of the pack can do so by contacting WCC’s Road Safety Team at RoadSafetyEducation@Warwickshire.gov.uk.

The creative arts competition for children and young people in Warwickshire invites schools to encourage their students to enter by picking any topic relevant to the theme of, “making every day a clean air day”.

The competition has both visual art and written art categories and is open to children and young people in every Key Stage. Schools will select the best from their pupils’ work, submitting one entry for each Key Stage and category for the final judging. The deadline for submitting entries is 7 July with the category winners in each Key Stage to be announced on 20 July. There will be a prize and a certificate for all winners. For further information about the competition, visit the Warwickshire Climate Emergency website.

Clean Air Day is the UK’s largest air pollution campaign, bringing together thousands of people at hundreds of events, and reaching millions. The national campaign brings together communities, businesses, schools and the health sector, and aims to:

• Improve public understanding of air pollution and how air pollution effects our health.
• Explain the easy actions we can all do to tackle air pollution, helping protect the environment and our health.
• Encourage individuals and organisations to take air pollution reducing actions and make changes to everyday practice.

This year, the focus of the campaign is on how air pollution dirties every organ in your body. Breathing polluted air can inflame the lining of the lungs and move into the bloodstream, affecting each and every organ, and can contribute to conditions such as lung disease, heart disease, dementia and strokes.

We can all take steps to help improve our air quality. Taking action can seem daunting, but a simple way to start making a difference is to make a pledge and change something small in your day-to-day life. It could be as simple as walking or cycling for short trips, which brings benefits to both your health and your wallet, as well as our environment. You could pledge to use public transport more often, or perhaps just to switch off your car when at a standstill, rather than idling.

Clean Air Day is the perfect opportunity to showcase some of the fantastic work being undertaken by community organisations in the fight against climate change. Warwickshire Cycle Buddies is a joint initiative between Clean Air Warwickshire, Cycleways Kenilworth, Leamington & Warwick, and Action 21. It’s a free service which connects novice adult cyclists, who may need help building confidence, with experienced riders across Warwickshire. The organisation is funded by Warwickshire County Council’s Green Shoots Fund, which will be opening to applications for its next round of funding on 17 June.

An innovative transport service, IndieGo PLUS, launched on 23 May, providing a new climate-friendly public transport option. Replacing a traditional fixed-route bus service, the IndieGo PLUS service has a bespoke app for booking journeys and is backed up with a call centre for those less adept with technology. The 16-seat, wheelchair ramp accessible vehicles feature free Wi-Fi and USB charging points. The vehicles can be tracked via the app and passengers will be notified when it’s close, so they don’t have to wait outside or at a bus stop.

Councillor Heather Timms, Portfolio Holder for Environment, Climate and Culture at Warwickshire County Council, said: “In our recently launched Council Plan 2022-2027, we established the need for a sustainable, net-zero future as a top priority. Taking steps to ensure that we all have clean air to breathe is essential, not only to combat climate change, but also to protect our health and the health of future generations.

“I’d like to take this opportunity, presented by the national Clean Air Day celebrations, to invite each and every resident of Warwickshire to make a pledge to take action, no matter how large or small-scale, to help improve the air we breathe.”

For more information about Warwickshire County Council’s Green Shoots fund, visit: https://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/greenshootsfund