Tonight we celebrated Earth Day with a digging task. It was a continuation of what we started last week at St Mary's Farnham Royal Primary School in their learning garden.

Last week we dug up bed 2 and removed as many weeds as we could. This evening we carried on ensuring the bed was weed free and did a little bit more around the strawberry and garlic sections.

We met directly at the task and our task owner Chrissy made sure we were given all the access we needed.

Great to have Firmo and Jason join us on their first task tonight. And Anna on her second task. Hope you enjoyed it and will come back again soon.

It's your bEARTH DAY!

So what exactly is Earth Day?

Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EARTHDAY.ORG (formerly Earth Day Network) including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries. The official theme for 2024 is "Planet vs. Plastics." 2025 will be the 55th anniversary of Earth Day. It includes a wide range of events and activities arranged by Earthday.org. Check out their website for more info - Earth Day: The Official Site | EARTHDAY.ORG

Planets vs Plastics

The theme this year for Eath Day is Planet vs Plastics

Did you know?

• Global plastics has reached an estimated 460 million metric tons in recent years;

• It is estimated that 75 to 199 million tons of plastic are currently in our oceans;

• One million plastic bottles are purchased every minute worldwide, while up to five trillion plastic bags are used a year;

Earthday.org have a goal to reduce plastics by 60% by 2040 (60X40).

At GoodGym we are very active in litter picks and keeping our outdoor spaces clean and clear, we get involved in helping community groups with restoring their nature areas back to useable spaces as well as supporting conservation groups with their projects....but can we do more?

Check out this toolkit for some ideas -

EarthDay-2024-Toolkit-March-12th-Update.pdf

So after all this information on Earth Day 2024 and completing our task this evening, we did a mini fitness session in the playground - after all it's important to keep ourselves active and fit! The team did really well in the circuits based exercises which consisted of ladder exercises; med ball throws and slams; kettlebell swings; cone to cone running and good old fashioned playground hopping and jumping!

We will be sad to see Hamid leave Slough. We hope you will come and visit us and we are always here to help you Hamid so please keep in touch.

And finally….. huge congratulations to Ricky on his London Marathon race yesterday! He smashed it with a new marathon personal best as well as a huge time off his half marathon timing!! And he looked fresh as a daisy when Harsha and I saw him at mile 23(ish) with the GoodGym cheer squad! We are all so proud you!

Next week we will be meeting at Salt hill activity Centre, in Salthill park, Bath Rd, SL1 3SS. Our task is to help Raggy Rd Allotments with their allotment space. We will be walking or running down to the allotments.

5 volunteers met up today despite the drizzle.

Welcome our newest member Anna to the session we hope you enjoyed our task.

Sorted out 20x bags of Summer Clothing in the smallest space ever.

We split up the group so Manjit and Sut went to litter Pick around the car park area. We used the opportunity to help towards the Great British Spring Clean https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/great-british-spring-clean-15th-31st-march

Thank you for your help!