Sustainability Spotlight: February 2025
Water testing ‘How to’ guide, Environmental Sustainability Award case studies, give lone oars blades a second life with Findoar, and much more!
Water Testing – ‘How to’ guide
Citizen science can be an important way to help us understand the health of our rivers and identify pollution sources. The data you gather is most useful when the testing takes place regularly, and the information is shared with a wider group. This way, your data can become part of a nationwide picture of river water quality, and feed in to wider conservation and monitoring plans.
We have a new guide for rowing clubs on how to test for phosphates and nitrates (P/N) and where to go for help/advice on testing kits.
Floating Pennywort Webinar – Presentation and recording available
Catch up on the discussions and practical advice covered at our Floating Pennywort Webinar, held on 14 January 2025, with our Invasive Species Officer, Pip Rowlandson.
findoar
The findoar service aims to help rowers and clubs save money and the environment by ensuring that useful equipment doesn’t go to waste.
Find or offer blades to make up pairs or sets that are missing one!
British Rowing Environmental Sustainability Award 2024 – Case studies now published
The winner and three commended nominations for our 2024 Environmental Sustainability Award contained a wealth of ideas from incorporating data on global warming into rowing kit designs to raise awareness and water quality testing, to switching to electric coaching launch engines and decarbonising the club’s heating and hot water system.
So if your club is looking for inspiration, check out these case studies now!
Clean Water Sports Alliance and Government
The Clean Water Sports Alliance (CWSA), of which British Rowing is a founding member, had several meetings with Government in January – one with both the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Water and Flooding – Emma Hardy, and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy.
The CWSA also inputted into research that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is doing regarding flooding. We know this is a big risk to many rowing clubs and events up and down the country; if you’d like to be interviewed for this research please email [email protected].
Funding
We would like to draw your attention to two new funding sources for environmental projects.
The Aviva Community Fund provides match funding for climate action projects that promote healthy, thriving communities by preventing, preparing for and protecting against the impacts of climate change.
The Canoe Foundation’s next funding round is open for applications from 1 to 28 February 2025. Eligible projects will include those that ‘Protect our rivers’ – environmental projects that mitigate riverbank erosion and support river clean-up initiatives.
You can find more grant-awarding bodies for various types of environmental sustainability projects on our Funding sources page.
