Parcelforce Worldwide has teamed up with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Wellcome Trust to deliver treasure chests full of activities and science experiments to more than 23,000 state primary schools across the UK aspart of The Great Plant Hunt. The £2 million project is designed to encourage young children to get out and about and excited by nature and coincides with the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. The boxes are aimed at five to 11 year olds and contain details about experiments along with storybooks, magnifiers, a plant identikit and a plant press and mini seed bank.
Concorde has a new home at Manchester Airport’s Aviation Viewing Park. The environmentally friendly building, which was constructed by De Boer, also houses a café and visitor facilities and is part of a major project to upgrade the viewing park. The all-weather structure was opened by British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh and Manchester Airport Group’s chief executive Geoff Muirhead at a ceremony attended by guests including Tim Orchard who jointly holds the Concorde World Record time for piloting the aircraft from New York to London in two hours, 52 minutes on 7th February 1996.
When Manchester City played FC Copenhagen at the Danish National Stadium in the UEFA Cup recently they actually played on home turf. DSV Road transported 21 lorry loads of turf from County Turf Scunthorpe to the Parken Stadium, which covered more than 7,000 sq m. The turf was harvested from growing fields a few days before the match took place, and was shipped from Immingham to Esbjerg before being laid ready for the game.
Pall-Ex founder Hilary Devey has been named Businesswoman of the Year in the emda Women of Worth awards. The WOW awards have been designed to recognise businesswomen who have made a significant contribution to the East Midlands economy, as well as role models for women wanting to start up their own businesses. Devey said: “It is actually testament to the hard work of a great team of people at Pall-Ex who have helped me along the way.”
Freightliner has donated £1,000 to a new story book initiative for children run by volunteers at the Royal Navy Air Station Yeovilton in Somerset, on Heavy Haul driver Ian Hewitson’s recommendation. The money will be used to buy digital recording equipment so that when servicemen and women are away on long tours of duty overseas they will have the opportunity to record bedtime stories for their children at home. At Yeovilton, volunteers will then edit the recordings, add sound effects and transfer them onto a CD, which is then given to the children to play at bedtime.
Express delivery company TNT has delivered hundreds of football shirts to fans of English football in Rwanda, Africa. The company was contacted by Mark Pawsey, Conservative parliamentary candidate for Rugby, who spent two weeks in Rwanda last summer with a group of volunteers. After discovering the passion Rwandans had for football and the English Premier League he decided to launch a football shirt appeal. Pawsey said: “It’s amazing how sport can be a common denominator. Throughout Rwanda I saw people wearing English Premier League football shirts and promised to send over some football shirts that my own children have grown out of. This idea has developed into a project to collect shirts to send out to youngsters and others in Rwanda, where I know they will become treasured possessions.”
Seventeen employees at NFT are getting on their bikes to do their bit for the environment. The company has implemented Halfords’ Cycle2Work scheme, which is designed to promote cycling as a healthier and greener mode of transport. By making a salary sacrifice, employees benefit from tax breaks and can ultimately purchase a new bike and equipment for up to 50 per cent less than retail.
The Box, the BBC‘s project to track a shipping container as it travels around the world for a year, appears to have got stuck. As we went to press, the BBC’s container was still in Santos, the Brazilian port where it arrived in February. Follow it’s progress at www.bbc.co.uk/thebox
