Greener Leith is delighted to announce that we have been selected by Vegware as the first charity to benefit from their newly established Vegware Community Fund. The funding will allow Greener Leith to employ a sessional worker to support green fingered volunteers grow more food in local community gardening projects.

Alastair Tibbitt, Development Manager at Greener Leith said, "Earlier this year we held a Food Summit, that showed that we needed to make it easier for volunteers to get involved on a regular basis with community garden projects. This funding from Vegware will help us to tackle this problem, as we'll now have the vital resources we need to run regular work days where green fingered volunteers can get stuck in. We see a natural link between the work that Vegware does to help the food industry to adopt more environmentally friendly business practices and the work that Greener Leith does to help people to lead healthier lifestyles by growing and sourcing more of their food locally."

Vegware is an Edinburgh based manufacturer of environmentally friendly catering disposables and food packing. Greener Leith already uses Vegware Compostable cups with our pedal powered smoothie maker - as modeled by local Blogger Jeff in the photo above.

Joe Frankel, Vegware's Managing Director and founder is an advocate of sustainable business practice.

He said, "It's an exciting time for business in the UK - we want to step up to the mark of being both profitable and a force for positive change. Our goal is to provide simple and economic ways to minimise the environmental impact of the catering industry. We have laid the foundations for a successful and profitable business by working with large organisations, who typically have the resources and manpower to effect positive change. We are very excited to now be in a position to support organisations like Greener Leith who do a fantastic job of promoting sustainability on a local level.

More information on Vegware is available from their website at www.vegware.com.

Greener Leith is also keen to encourage local businesses to make the switch from plastic food packaging to biodegradable packaging as this will cut the amount of persistent plastic litter that blights our neighbourhood. Every time we there's a community clean-up event in Leith we find plastic food packaging comprises a large amount of the stuff volunteers end up picking up. However, we're not alone in Leith. For example, the Marine Conservation Society have seen a 110% increase in the amount of plastic litter affecting our beaches since 1994.

Any local food businesses interested in switching from plastic disposable packaging to biodegradable packaging are eligible for a discount, from Vegware, through Greener Leith. To find out more, please contact us.