Member Article

Bdaily talks to Rita Callender from Environmental Academy

In the run up to this year’s Big Eco Show, Bdaily is talking to key partners of the event, to get their take on the North East’s eco-efforts. This week, we spoke to Rita Callender, Managing Director of the Environmental Academy.

The Environmental Academy are involved with the Big Eco Show as a way of making businesses aware of funding opportunities available in the North East for implementing efficiency and sustainability measures.

Rita told Bdaily: “The Environmental Academy will be at the Big Eco Show delivering workshops to businesses and informing people at the event of how they can gain funding for environmental management support, which is not an opportunity to be missed.

“We will be showcasing our Environmental Management Support Initiative (EMSI) on the morning of the show at our exhibition stand. EMSI is a consultancy support project which is fully funded by ERDF that helps businesses in the North East to establish environmental management systems to system standards and implement environmental improvements. We are also assisting SME’s to measure their carbon footprint.

“Later in the afternoon at the Big Eco Show we will be running a workshop on the Environmental Renaissance in Europe’ (ERIE) project. Our European partners for this project are visiting the UK from Slovenia, Spain and Germany especially for the show.

“As part of this project we have developed an online resource that businesses can use which is an elearning Environmental Awareness course specific to the food and drink industry. Everyone attending the workshop on the day will receive free course which provides a full certificate when it is completed.

“We have a speaker from an SME that has already worked with us on the project, who will show the benefits of the training and our support.The Environment Agency will also be speaking at our workshop on pollution in the food and drink industry and explaining how they can assist with these challenges.

Bdaily asked Rita why the Big Eco Show is important for the North East region. She explained:

“We think the Big Eco Show provides a fantastic opportunity to create relationships with businesses in the North East and show how they can become more efficient and sustainable. This is an excellent platform to apply for fully funded help through The Environmental Academy. It is important that we now have a high profile environmental event like Big Eco to showcase the best green initiatives to the North East business community and their benefits.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Miranda Dobson .