Your Big Green Ideas

Want to reduce vehicle emissions in the City? Encourage the use of powered two wheelers ( That's Motorcycles and Scooters!) for commuting nad personal transport. Every morning I pass lines of stationary cars, belting out pollution as I sail past in the bus lane on one of my motorcycles. Better economy, less pollution and more smiles per mile!

Some ideas would be to encourage employees to use alternative modes of transport such as public transport, cycling or walking. A way to promote this would be to provide incentives such as reimbursement for cycling or usage of public transport. By implementing flexible working arrangements where possible such as employees working from home on certain days or compressed workweeks to reduce the need for daily commuting. You can encourage employees to include physical activity into their daily routine by organising walking/cycling challenges. In terms of education and awareness by raising issues of climate change and encouraging sustainable practices among customers, employees and the general public you can create a culture of environmental responsibility. Companies should provide programmes on climate change and educate adults on how to reduce their environmental footprint at both work and home. By doing all this everyone can play a meaningful role in combatting climate change and contributing to a more sustainable future.

Belfast has very little real urban tree cover, mostly concentrated in large parks and with huge areas left entirely lacking in greenery. Many streets may have one tree and then another, 400 metres away on the other side of the road. The cycling network is similarly disjointed, often beginning and ending metres away - usually at a junction, turn, or any other point where cyclists are in most danger.

On my street, Carolhill Drive BT4, for instance, half the street was planted more than 50 years ago, my half remains bereft of trees, could we rectify this now? Could you plant trees in the gardens of the willing? What about derelict green areas where buildings have been torn down. Some of these are prominent eyesores, like the spot on the corner of the Belmont and Holywood Rd. where the Stormont Inn used to be. This is not a good aesthetic introduction to a thriving road of interesting independent shops and cafes at Strandtown. Could this be a pocket park? Thanks for listening.

Belfast has many parks but they are unevenly distributed. The council should adopt a policy to be able to walk to a community green space with a 10 minutes from any location. I live in ballyhackamore and we have no parks but land has been sitting unused for years for example old Grovener School land sold to a developer, public green space should never be sold to developers.