Over 80% of children aged 8-15 in the UK say that looking after the environment is important to them. To help parents and guardians nurture this passion, Bower Collective have created a tool which evaluates per child, UK towns and cities facilities to raise climate-conscious kids. The study examined per child (the local population of 0-15 year olds), the number of local outdoor learning organisations, access to local allotments and local farm produce, access to second-hand childrenswear and number of family-friendly outdoor activities. Across the UK, Nuneaton and St Austell rank joint top, followed by Bath in 2nd position and Oxford in 3rd. Newtownabbey, London and Hull rank bottom of the study.
Top locations for outdoor learning
Incorporating ‘outdoor education’ into a child’s life, promotes environmental awareness and stewardship, and according to research, can significantly reduce stress and boost self-esteem. The hotspots for outdoor learning are Woking, St Austell and Watford.
Top locations for fresh, local produce
Growing your own produce helps reduce carbon emissions, connect to nature, and avoid nasty toxins. Nuneaton, Worcester and Oxford which have the best ratio of allotments to child. The study also examines the number of farm parks to explore with the kids, and the number of local farms as an indicator of the amount of local produce on offer. St Austell tops this category, and Welsh localities Wrexham and Newport come 2nd and 3rd.
Top locations to source second-hand childrenswear
There are an estimated 183 million pieces of outgrown children’s wear in the UK alone, much of which ends up in landfill. Opting for second-hand children’s clothes is a great alternative to help the planet and save money. Looking at online listings for second-hand childrenswear, parents in Wrexham, Nuneaton and Blyth have the most online options on offer, with the most childrenswear listings per child in the UK.
Top locations for family-days out outdoors
Finally, to inspire an enduring love and connection with the great outdoors, the study assessed the number of family-friendly days out along the coast, countryside and in urban gardens and parks. Multi-category winner, St Austell is the most environmentally ‘interactive’ location (with 119 destinations per 10,000 kids), far surpassing the next best options of Hereford (with 38 per 10,000 kids) and Woking (with 34).
Regional and national winners
In Scotland, Dundee is the best place to raise an ‘eco-family’, followed by Aberdeen. Wrexham is the top spot in Wales, followed by Newport. Finally, in Northern Ireland, Lisburn is the best place to raise a ‘mini eco-warrior’, followed by Derry. In England, the study found that the South East of England is the best England region to raise a ‘mini eco warrior’, followed by the East of England and the South West.
About Bower Collective
Sustainable online subscription platform, Bower Collective provides consumers with Earth’s best home and personal care products in reusable and refillable packaging. Launched in January 2020, Bower Collective is rapidly becoming the world’s leading, digital first, sustainable consumer goods company, with a community of over 60,000 customers and counting.
Methodology
To put together the tool, Bower collected data from a variety of data sources including: Google Maps API to find the total number of farms and allotments across the UK, the National Trust to get the number of family-friendly outdoors destinations, Preloved for the number of second-hand childrenswear listings and Little Green Explorer for the number of local outdoor learning organisations. Once all the data points were collected, in order to normalise the data and ensure that our ranking metric was fair; a per child formula (per 10,000 children aged 0-15) was used to score the towns and cities in the tool
