Lanarkshire Businesses: Take part in the Lanarkshire-wide Celebration of Climate Action

Are you a Lanarkshire-based business who is keen to show your commitment to sustainability?

Take part in this year's Lanarkshire Climate Action Festival! This year marks year three of the festival which takes place from 7-20 September 2026 and will see community groups delivering events and activities all across Lanarkshire.

In 2025 there were over 100 events, engaging more than 2,200 attendees. The programme of events attracted local publicity and was shared widely across a range of platforms including newspaper articles, local radio interviews, TV interview with That's TV Glasgow, on local politicians and South Lanarkshire Council's social media accounts.

 

Why should your businesses take part in the festival?

Participation in the festival is an excellent way to showcase your commitment to local climate action and can help you demonstrate social impact and contribute to staff wellbeing. To take part you could either host an event/activity for your employees or promote the festival and provide a service to your customers. 

 

What sort of event/activity could we host?

⚡️ Get staff involved in actions they can take to reduce energy costs:

• Use resources from Business Energy Scotland to discover where there are opportunities to save energy at your premises.
• Share guidance for homeworking staff on how they can contribute.

 

🚲 Support staff to reduce their carbon impact from their travel to work:

• Promote the benefits of travelling actively.
• Organise a Walk or Cycle to Work Day and include hiring a Lanarkshire community cycling organisation like Socialtrack or Gear Up to run a bike safety or maintenance session.

 

🌱 Encourage plant-based food choices that boost health and cut carbon emissions:

• Increase plant-based food offered in the staff canteen and at catered work events.
• Host a tasting session with suppliers including GoKrsna for staff to try alternative snacks and lunch options. 

 

🌳 Contribute to protecting local places and nature: 

• Arrange a litter pick to clean up an area and survey the type of litter collected to contribute to citizen science. The Council can provide bags and litter pickers as well as arranging for the uplift of the bags of litter. Keep Scotland Beautiful has a litter survey info pack and gathers data for a national litter database.
• Contact Lanarkshire Facebook groups including East Kilbride Community Litter Pickers, Hamilton and Blantyre Litter Pickers and Lanarkshire Litter Wombles to see where you can help them.

 

♻️ Highlight how staff can reduce their climate impact through circular buying habits:

• Share recommendations of programmes to watch such as Buy New: The Shopping Conspiracy Netflix documentary.
• Provide a bookcase where staff can set up a book exchange or other swap initiative.

 

How can I promote the festival and provide a service to my customers?

If you have a customer-facing business, there are several ways you could participate in the festival:

💫 Display a Lanarkshire Climate Action Festival poster, highlighting to customers the local events taking place

📧 Share online through a newsletter, email or social media post and use the festival hashtag #LanarkshireClimateActionFestival

☕️ If you brew a lot of coffee, offer your coffee grounds for use by local gardeners or growing groups. Find your local growing group here.

🧂 Trial reducing food packaging, swap sachets of sugar, condiments and sauce for containers

 

Examples of initiatives at previous festivals:

🏅In 2025, South Lanarkshire Council linked the Climate Action Festival with the Better Points initiative. By travelling actively to Climate Festival events, app users could earn more points and enter into a prize draw. Full details can be found here.

🪡 Lanarkshire business ACS Clothing have participated for two years in Lanarkshire Climate Action Festival. They were keen to support the festival but were unsure how they could. Together we created a Mend & Repair workshop and partnered with staff from ACS Clothing to bring their staff and equipment to community venues in Coatbridge, Motherwell, Larkhall and Blantyre to share their skills and expertise in repairing clothing. The events were free to attend and participants had lots of positive feedback:

"I loved all of it, gained practical advice on how to set up a sewing machine, watching the experts. I will be getting a sewing machine, this workshop has been very useful. I will alter clothes rather than buying new."

 

Has this got you thinking about your business participating in this year's festival? Contact us to discuss ideas - our team would be delighted to help you: info@climateactionlanarkshire.net.