Dean Russell hosted the inaugural Watford Environmental Roundtable focussing on preventing food waste in Parliament with representatives from organisations across Watford to create a plan for reducing food waste and single use plastic in our town.
While the world’s leaders meet in Glasgow at COP26 to discuss the practical steps that can be taken to reduce the effects of climate change on our planet, Dean wanted to ensure that Watford could be part of that discussion at a local level, which is why he invited a range of leaders from across Watford to meet with him in Parliament to share ideas. Dean wants our town to not only end the use of single use plastic, but to also reduce the level of food waste greatly too.
He was joined for this discussion by Erika Loch and Wayne McArdle from Akshaya Patra, Enoch Kanagaraj from One Vision, Anna Addison from Watford Three Rivers Friends of the Earth, Chris Luff from Watford Chamber of Commerce and Jane Johnson from Random Café. They discussed practical steps that they will work together to implement over the coming weeks and months and more information will be released about this soon.
Erika Loch, the Director of Operations at Akshaya Patra, said after the event: “It was great to meet with Dean to discuss how locally in Watford we can all pitch in to make a difference and improve things over the long term.”
Enoch Kanagaraj, the Chairman of One Vision, commented: “We had the opportunity to meet Dean to talk about how we can put together an action plan to look after the environment. In Watford we all need to come together to see how we can be an example to other towns in tackling this important issue.”
Dean will be working with these organisations over the coming weeks to create locally focussed ‘White Paper’ which will be the basis for their plan to create positive change in Watford to help the environment. Further meetings will be held at the beginning of next year to discuss the progress that will have been made and to look at how this can be built on to achieve the collective aim of reducing food waste and single use plastic in Watford.
