After 10 months of celebrating incredible Eco Heroes all across the north and north-east, it’s time for you, our readers, to choose which one gets £500 for their cause.
We launched our Eco Heroes project all the way back in February this year, and over the past 10 months we’ve put the spotlight on 10 fantastic individuals and organisations who have all really gone the extra mile to protect our planet.
From a Nairn beekeeper dedicated to saving bees, to an Aberdeen designer transforming old bike tyres into stylish bags, we’ve covered a huge variety of wonderful people dedicated to doing their part.
But there can be only one winner of our £500 prize, which will go toward supporting one amazing cause.
We’ve asked our judging panel of three environmental experts to come together and create a shortlist of a final three Eco Heroes for our readers to vote on, and we’ll reveal who has won the £500 after Christmas.
The final three Eco Heroes up for the £500 prize are:
- Repair What You Wear, an Aberdeen-based initiative that creates free clothing repair videos to fight fast fashion that have attracted hundreds of thousands of views online
- The Ullapool Sea Savers, an Ullapool-based group of youngsters on a mission to keep our Scottish waters clear of rubbish and protect the species that live in them
- Shark and Skate Citizen Science Scotland, a community science project designed to help protect vulnerable species like the critically endangered flapper skate
Cast your vote here:
We will be closing the vote on the morning of Monday, December 19, and then get in touch with the winner.
And you can check back with the Press and Journal after Christmas to reveal the results and find out who has won the £500, and what they’ll be doing with it.
Who are our Eco Hero judges?
In order to create our final shortlist, we put together a judging panel of three people who are heavily invested in working to protect the environment from around Scotland.
Our judges are:
David Burslem
Stewart Angus
Fiona McIntyre
So why did they choose each shortlisted Eco Hero?
Repair What You Wear
Fiona said: “I love the skills development and climate consciousness from this pair.
“We have had a lot of requests for workshops of this type at the centre, and it definitely feeds into a need for people to be able to make more sustainable choices with their fashion.”
David said the Repair What You Wear initiative is a “clever idea, with a very high impact and international reach”.
And Stewart said the videos the pair produce “can make a real dent in the amount of clothing sent to landfill”, and highlighted their “truly impressive number of views” they’ve racked up on their videos so far.
Shark and Skate Citizen Science Scotland
Stewart said the Shark and Skate Citizen Science Scotland scheme “takes a simple but effective citizen science approach, allowing anyone to get involved in a project that can make a real difference to the fate of a rare species.
And Fiona added: “The mermaid’s purse is a treasured beach combing find, and to provide means for people to engage with citizen science and how we monitor marine species is very valuable”.
The Ullapool Sea Savers
David called the Ullapool Sea Savers an “inspiring group of youngsters joining together for marine conservation”.
He praised their “excellent outreach, political lobbying and public engagement”.
And Stewart says he thinks the Sea Savers “make it cool to clear up sea-borne rubbish”.
He added: “The connection with the marine environment that is encouraged by this project is of huge importance in a fishing port”.
