Island Life Awards celebrate two years of Arran climate action.

The awards gave a fantastic summary of the project and ensured that the community involved - both as volunteers and participants - were recognised for their amazing achievements. With so many people involved, we can't list all the people acknowledged here, so we encourage you to watch the event recording to find out more.

Arran Eco Savvy's Sustainable Island Life Project offered home energy efficiency advice to help residents on the Isle of Arran to reduce their energy use and carbon emissions, with additional support to address fuel poverty. An amazing 37 air to air heat pumps have been installed across the island. Inspiring energy efficiency case studies can be viewed here.

Further project activities focused on food waste and lower carbon travel alternatives. And two volunteers commended at the Sustainable Island Life Awards have previously been recognised as CCF Climate Heroes. 

As a food share volunteer Gregor McKelvie had run 35 individual food shares diverting a massive one tonne of food from landfill at the time of his nomination as a CCF Climate Hero. And Gerard Tattersfield was commended for providing expert insight into setting up and expanding the project’s e-bike scheme and inspiring the community to choose active travel. He ran the first month of the e-bike scheme with employees at the Lochranza distillery, helping staff save over 600 miles of car travel in those four weeks. You can read more all our 2019 CCF Climate Heroes here.

With Covid-19 meaning a halt to physical events, the project went virtual. The Eco-Savvy film club operated online bringing topical climate change and sustainability discussion into homes across the island and beyond. The film club has inspired many other community-led organisations to run their own online film events. And Eco-Savvy have been on-hand to support those wanting to run a film showing, including a practical presentation for attendees at the 2020 CCF Gathering evening film event.

The project lists 827 tonnes of carbon savings as a key achievement - helping to tackle climate change both in Scotland and around the world. We encourage you to find out more about the amazing people behind this island initiative. Volunteers, participants, staff, local business and the wider community have all played an important part.

You can watch a recording of the awards on the Arran Eco Savvy Facebook page here.

Keep Scotland Beautiful manage the CCF on behalf of the Scottish Government and have staff that support applicants, Grant Recipients and other community-led organisations wanting to take action on climate change.