Volunteers Week 2024

This Volunteers’ Week, Leicestershire County Council would like to thank all Environment Action Volunteers (EAVs) for their hard work and dedication.

There are around 60 EAVs working across Leicestershire who typically contributed around 1,000 hours of their time each year to support the work of the council’s Waste Initiatives, Carbon & Climate, and Environment teams. The EAVs help us to engage with thousands of Leicestershire residents on a broad range of topics, and in a meaningful way, something we could not do alone.

EAVs perform a wide range of tasks; promoting home composting, helping residents to reduce food waste and generally reuse and recycle more effectively. EAVs have also begun to make residents aware of the actions they can take to reduce their environmental footprint(s) and to encourage more people to take positive actions for nature too.

A group of Environment Action Volunteers receiving certificates in recognition of five or more years of voluntary service. These were awarded at a recent Chairman’s reception event at County Hall.

Our most recent cohort of newly trained EAVs are supporting efforts to identify and record ancient trees around the county so that these can be listed and offered protected status. Another new and exciting area of work is the linking of EAVs to Community Fridges where they are supporting work on home composting and food waste prevention. EAVs run the compost demonstration site at Stokes Wood Allotment site, which continues to host a steady stream of events and workshops, and EAVs continue to have informal conversations around the topics they are passionate about, positively influencing behaviour in the process.

The number of hours volunteered, events attended, and people spoken to is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the impact of the work EAVs do, so keep your eyes peeled for a couple of case studies on our Facebook page this week!

If you’d like the support of an EAV, or if you’d like more information on signing up as a volunteer please visit our volunteering page.