Falkirk Council scooped the top awards when more than 70 of Scotland’s ‘greenest’ people attended the REHIS sponsored Scottish Green Apple Environment Awards 2014 recently. Falkirk Council scored a stunning hat-trick of success, winning Local Authorities Gold awards for two of their submissions – ‘The Helix’ and the ‘Greenspace Initiative’. On the strength of that double-whammy, they went on to win the top accolade – Green Champion of Scotland 2014.
The presentation ceremony was staged at The Scotsman Hotel, Edinburgh and the trophies were presented by Sophie Desbrow, Miss UK Green Queen. Other category Gold winners included Dundee City Council, Transport Scotland, Balfour Beatty, Richard Murphy Architects, Kier Infrastructure & Overseas, J. Murphy & Sons, Forestry Commission Scotland, Healthcare Environmental Group, Wind & Cloud Travel, and Clyde Shopping Centre.
REHIS Senior Vice-President Martin Keeley shared the Master of Ceremonies duties, and he commented: It was a great honour to be able to recognise and reward some of Scotland’s greenest councils, companies and communities in this way. We heard some inspirational stories of how organisations have greatly improved their environmental performance, and it is gratifying to see that this is still a top priority for many of the country’s leading players. We wish them the best of success with their continued efforts.
All of the Scottish entries now go forward with the possibility of winning an additional UK Green Apple Award, which will be presented in the Houses of Parliament, London, in November.
The Green Apple Awards are also one of the few schemes acting as an automatic feeder scheme into the Brussels-led European Business Awards for the Environment, so all winners have the chance to represent their country in that prestigious campaign.
They will also be invited to help others to help the environment by having their winning papers published in The Green Book, the world’s only annual work of reference on environmental best practice that is distributed free of charge all over the UK and around the world through embassies, environment professionals, central and regional government, universities, reference libraries and the media.
If they agree to help others to follow their lead, they then become Green World Ambassadors and collect additional trophies and certificates and if that were not enough – the overall top scorer also wins a free holiday for two in Aquacity, Slovakia the world’s greenest resort. All of this is organised by The Green Organisation, an international, independent, non-profit, non-political, non-activist environment group dedicated to recognising, rewarding and promoting environmental best practice around the world.
