Air Quality campaign for businesses

• Clean Air Day
• #EnginesOff! Campaign
• Healthy Streets Everyday
• Clean Air Villages - Phase 3

Clean Air Day

Clean Air Day is the UK’s largest air pollution campaign. It encourages everyone to take action to help reduce air pollution and usually involves hundreds of events around the country including many in our borough.

Clean Air Day - Thursday 20 June 2024

This year our theme for Clean Air Day is ‘Clean, sustainable and active travel’.

According to official data, cars and vans are the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and some types of air pollution in the UK, harming both our health and the planet.

It is important to take action to reduce emissions produced by these vehicles. Whenever possible, we should look to use the cleanest and most sustainable methods of transport, for business operations and travel, as well as in our daily commute.

Here are a few ways to support Clean Air Day on 20 June 2024 and beyond:

• Trial a Cargo bike for your deliveries
• Implement the cycle to work scheme for staff
• Collaborate with your suppliers to reduce local air pollution
• Do a quick and simple air pollution mapping exercise to help identify the actions your business can take to address its impact on air quality
• Join Business for Clean Air to reduce your contributions and improve your green credentials
• Deliver idling action training to drivers and sign up to the no idling pledge. Use the Business Idling Event and Fleet and Driver Toolkits and share this free idling action ‘engines off’ training video with your staff
• Amplify the call for cleaner air by re-tweeting Clean Air Day posts by @LBRuT and @cleanairdayuk on and around 20 June using the hashtag #CleanAirDay2024
• Spread the word to your employees, volunteers and suppliers using social media and/or a newsletter article to:
  • Raise their awareness about air pollution
  • Advertise the low pollution route finder to help reduce personal exposure whilst walking and cycling to work and for leisure

Encourage your staff to:

• Take the cleanest and most sustainable method of travel - walking, cycling, wheeling and using public transport are cleaner ways to travel, helping to improve local air pollution, as well as our physical and mental health
• Come along to our pop-up event 11am to 4pm Thursday 20 June - next to the flower stall in George Street, Richmond to discover more about the business and community cargo bike scheme, do the street entertainers’ quiz and find out more about local air pollution where you live and work
• Take our Clean Air Challenge to create cleaner air in our borough
• See what is being done in the borough for Clean Air Day

Learn more as a business about: 
•    Why you should be concerned about clean air 
•    How businesses contribute to air pollution 
•    Air pollution in the workplace

#EnginesOff! Campaign

As part of the Idling Action project, we ask local businesses to join the #EnginesOff campaign which includes a driver training video with information and tips on how use your vehicles more efficiently and help reduce local air pollution. We also encourage businesses to sign our engine idling pledge to help eliminate engine idling in our borough.

View Air Quality for Businesses for more information about this campaign and other projects that businesses can get involved in.

Healthy Streets Everyday

The Healthy Streets Everyday campaign helps encourage small behaviour changes every day through the promotion of walking and cycling and has adapted in 2020 to include school streets, cycle training, and the online promotion of Car Free Day and Clean Air Day. This is a Cross River Partnership led project.

Clean Air Villages - Phase 3

The Clean Air Villages campaign helps to promote long term behaviour change by supporting local businesses in areas of high pollution to reduce their own impact on local air quality, particularly around deliveries. This is a Cross River Partnership led project.

View Air Quality for Businesses for more information about Clean Air Villages.