Thanet Green Party has played a lead role in the partnership that has established Thanet’s first Big Green Week.
National Green Week was at the end of September, but many folk involved in Thanet’s week were tied up with other events like Ramsgate’s Royal Harbour 200 festival then – so Thanet is doing things differently, as usual! To make up for being a little later, Thanet’s Big Green Week is in fact 10 days long, running between Friday 1 and Sunday 10 October.
Our Green Week is a last-minute, cross-party, cross-community initiative that aims to bring together environmentally focused events and activities taking place across Thanet, to encourage and empower residents to take direct action to improve our local – and collectively, our global – environment.
The message is unambiguous: we all can and must make positive change to improve our environment and each take responsibility for the change we want to see.
The week focuses on sustainable living across the Isle, from litter picks and gardening through webinars and talks to Broadstairs Food Festival. All the events, run by many different groups, are featured on the Green Week Facebook page.
Alongside the events is a series of links to hints and tips on how we can all live a little more sustainably, ranging from ways to reduce your energy costs (highly topical at present!) to how to green up your front garden. Anyone is welcome to add events or links to the page or to share it with other groups.
Thanet’s Week was the brainchild of Barry Manners from the Friends of Botany Bay and Kingsgate group, who has worked with Thanet Green Party’s Tricia Austin to put the information together. Barry proposed a weekend of beach cleans round the Isle to prepare our beaches for winter, now that extra TDC beach-cleaning staff have finished their seasonal work. So the weekend of 9-10 October will be a weekend of clean-ups in Thanet – Margate and Broadstairs on Saturday, and Botany Bay and Ramsgate on Sunday.
Thanet Green Party Councillor Tricia Austin said:
“There are activities going on across the Isle: in Ramsgate, for example, there’s painting and cleaning the seafront shelters, Montefiore Woodland’s regular work party and the Ramsgate Society’s twice-yearly Chine to Chine litter pick, in Broadstairs there’s the Food Festival and litter picking, while in Cliftonville there’s beach cleaning and Thanet Biodiversity’s planting day. But if you’re not up for taking part in physically active events, we’ve also listed less arduous things, including Margate NOW’s amazing Eco Gathering at the Sunken Garden in Westbrook and a couple of webinars that you can enjoy from the comfort of your armchair!”
Please visit the Facebook page for more details, or contact Tricia on thanetgreenparty@gmail.com for a list of events taking place during the week.
The photos show activities from previous years:
Large group of litter pick volunteers in high viz in Ramsgate during the Ramsgate Society Chine to Chine Litter Pick
Volunteers cleaning and repainting a shelter on Ramsgate seafront