NHS Fife’s carbon literacy journey started when the Public Sector Liaison Officer at Climate Action Fife met with the NHS Fife Sustainability Officer. They explored the support Climate Action Fife could offer and agreed to focus on Carbon Literacy training and its benefits. Together, they decided to co-develop and co-deliver this training.

Developing the Toolkit

While researching, the team found a Carbon Literacy for Healthcare toolkit created by NHS England. Climate Action Fife suggested adapting this toolkit to fit the Scottish context and make it relevant for NHS staff. A working group met with the Carbon Literacy Project to discuss this process. They gained access to the original materials to tailor them for health agencies in Fife.

Collaboration and Creation

The teams worked closely together. They held regular meetings online and in person. They created an action tracker to divide the slide deck and assign research and editing tasks.

Activities and slides from Fife Council’s toolkit helped improve the NHS Fife version. This process also informed updates to Fife Council’s Climate Know How training by sharing lessons learned.

“Fife Council colleague expertise in Carbon Literacy training was invaluable in shaping the toolkit.”
Kathyn Hastie, Sustainability Officer, NHS Fife

Accreditation and Funding

To meet the certification criteria, the team reviewed the slide deck and explained to the Carbon Literacy Project how it met all requirements. After this final step, the NHS Fife Carbon Literacy for Healthcare – General Staff Course achieved accreditation.

NHS Fife funded the development of the toolkit while Fife Council funded 100–150 certifications. This investment will significantly benefit NHS Fife staff and strengthen local climate action.

Conclusion

The partnership between Climate Action Fife and NHS Fife has been vital in creating a tailored Carbon Literacy Training toolkit for Scotland’s health sector. Working together ensured the training was practical, relevant, and impactful.

Next Steps

Building on this success, NHS Fife’s Sustainability Team and Climate Action Fife plan to co-deliver training to Fife Health and Social Care Partnership colleagues. The course will blend NHS and local authority content to reflect their shared working culture.

The partners look forward to growing this collaboration.

Recently, NHS Fife presented the training at an NHS Lothian Sustainability Webinar. The event drew a large audience from NHS Scotland and inspired other boards to start their own carbon literacy programmes. The presentation highlighted the strong partnership between NHS Fife and Fife Council, which played a key role in launching this important work.

Fife Council held seven community workshops in spring 2024 to explore local climate action as part of their Climate Fife Strategy. Residents shared ideas like tool libraries, community gardens, and food projects.

The workshops showed that linking climate action to issues like health and poverty helps engage people. This work is already shaping policies and partnerships to embed climate action in regeneration and health plans across Fife.

Fife Council wanted to engage young people and families around sustainability. To do this, they worked with ScrapAntics at their Cycling Extravaganza event held at the Fife Cycling Park in Lochgelly. 

ScrapAntics is a creative recycling social justice enterprise that runs Dundee’s only ScrapStore. Their core values are community, art, recycling, and education. 

The event allowed participants to create art objects using bike wheels and old scraps of material. This hands-on exercise encouraged a lot of discussions around reuse and recycling as well as active travel. This fun activity engaged 16 people (9 children and 7 adults).   

The activity created meaningful conversations about sustainability and the importance of recycling. It highlighted the creative potential of repurposing materials. It also fostered a sense of community and environmental responsibility among participants. 

The collaboration with ScrapAntics was effective. It created conversations with young people and families about sustainability. By combining art and recycling at the Cycling Extravaganza, Fife Council was able to promote active travel and environmental awareness in a fun and interactive manner. 

In 2024/25, funding from our Community Climate Grants – Small Grants Fund helped even more groups across Fife involve local people in climate action. Many groups organised activities during Fife Climate Festival. Hundreds of people of all ages took part.

case studies

Download our case studies to see how groups used their grants to get people involved in climate action.

Balmullo Social Committee (pdf)
Batswood (pdf)
Calaiswoods and Duloch Park (pdf)
Cupar Development Trust (pdf)
Curnie Club (Fife Alcohol Support Service) (pdf)
Dunfermline Greenspace Forum (pdf)
EATS Rosyth (pdf)
Fife Young Carers (pdf)
Footprint East Neuk (pdf)
Forgan Arts Community (pdf)
Friends of Pittencrieff Community (pdf)
Kirkcaldy High School Green Spaces (pdf)
Milton and Coaltown of Balgonie Community Council (pdf)
Saline and Steelend Fabulous Food Pantry (pdf)
Saline Environmental Group (pdf)
Seafield Environment Group (pdf)
Touch Community Garden (pdf)
Transition University St Andrews (pdf)

In 2023/24, funding from our Community Climate Grants – Small Grants Fund helped 12 community groups to involve local people in climate action. We were also able to support 8 events organised by community groups during the Fife Climate Festival. At least 467 people took part in activities.

Case studies

Download our case studies to see how groups used their grants to get people involved in climate action.

Aberdour Climate Action Network (pdf)
Balmullo Community Council (pdf)
Forgan Arts Centre (pdf)
Friends of Pittencrieff Park (pdf)
Kingsbarns Community Development Trust (pdf)
Leslie Golf Club (pdf)
My Cowdenbeath (pdf)
St Andrews Botanic Garden Trust (pdf)
Sustainable Cupar (pdf)
West Fife Woodlands Group (pdf)
Youth 1st (pdf)

In January and February 2024, we ran a series of five workshops for community groups. These workshops were a partnership with Fife Climate Hub.

We covered a range of topics including working with the media, planning communications, social media and newsletters.

You can watch recordings of the five sessions below.

How to plan communications

WOrking with the media

Social media mastery

How to make engaging newsletters

Learn to use Canva

Plastic-Free Fife have designed these top tips to run a successful beach-clean or litter pick in your area.

If you organise or participate in beach cleans or other clean-ups, well done! You’re already making a huge contribution to improving our local environment.

Plastic-Free Fife’s members have organised clean-ups for several years. They’ve now put together a few tips on how to make your clean-up events even eco-friendlier. We hope you find these tips useful.

In 2022/23, funding from the Small Grants Fund helped 15 community groups to engage local people in climate action.

The groups used this support to organise a varied range of activities that allowed them to get people involved. These include gardening workshops and growing seedlings to share with local people. Groups ran climate action taster sessions, planted willow ‘fedges’ and monitored local wildlife affected by the climate emergency. Plastic-Free Fife created and launched a plastic-free events guide.

More than 1,000 people from local communities took part in these activities. This created a wave of climate action across Fife.

The young people learned how they can make a difference through climate action and how they can ultimately contribute towards change.

Markinch Community Hub

Case studies

Download our case studies to see how groups used their grants to get people involved in climate action.

Anstruther Improvements Association (pdf)
Bats Wood (pdf)
Burntisland Development Trust (pdf)
Charlestown, Limekilns and Pattiesmuir Nature Conservation (pdf)
Footprint East Neuk (pdf)
Friends of Pittencrieff Park (pdf)
Kingsbarns Community Development Trust (pdf)
Markinch Community Hub (pdf)
Plastic-Free Dunfermline (pdf)
Saline Environmental Group (pdf)
St Andrews Botanic Garden (pdf)
Strathmiglo Conservation Community (pdf)
The Ecology Centre (pdf)

Do you need help to reduce plastic waste at your local festival, gala or sporting event?

Plastic-Free Fife has produced a helpful guide for organising zero-waste events. It contains practical advice for event organisers on waste prevention. management, and communications.

Funding from Climate Action Fife’s Small Grants Fund made this guide possible.

Some top tips to make climate-friendly behaviours part of your routine.

Making new habits part of your routine is difficult. The tips below are useful; for the Big Five as well as other climate friendly behaviours, and can even be used to help with healthy eating, exercise routine and many other desired behaviours.

• Start easy: Creating new habits is difficult, and it takes time for them to become “normal”. If you overstretch yourself early on, you are unlikely to continue. So choose one that is realistic and achievable. Rather than try to replace a 10 mile drive to work with a bike ride, start with a 10 minute cycle to the shops instead; instead of going full vegan, introduce a couple of plant-based dishes to your culinary repertoire.
• Connect your new habit to an existing one: Pairing up a new habit with something, you do every day without fail, will quickly make a new behaviour part of your routine. Lay your cycle clothes out with your regular ones or put your bike clips in your sock drawer and pop them on with your socks!
• Design your environment: we are greatly influenced by what is around us. Make a few changes to make doing the “right” thing an easier choice or even just to remind you to do it. You could keep the vegetarian cookbook by the pens you use to write the shopping list or keep your car keys in your bike helmet to remind yourself to take the bike.
• Use positive self-talk: Don’t beat yourself up if you have a small slip – you’re only human and there is so much temptation around us all the time. Remember we need everyone taking climate action imperfectly, not a handful of people getting in totally right. Try switching your thinking – don’t say “I don’t eat meat on a Wednesday”, instead say “ If I have vegetables tonight, I can have a bacon butty tomorrow”. You can also focus on what you gain, rather than what you lose, for example, cycling will make your fitter, improve your mental health and give a more interesting journey.
• Celebrate your success: Don’t feel embarrassed to give yourself a pat on the back and say well done. Do this after each small step, rather than after reaching a big milestone, it’ll help you stay committed and become the climate champion you want to be! You could even keep a visual record of your mini-successes, by adding a sticker to a chart or a pebble to a jar. Before you know it, you’ll have a mountain.

Ref: Dr Rangan Chatterjee, Feel Better in 5: Your Daily Plan to Feel Great for Life, Penguin Books (2019)  ISBN:9780241397817, 0241397812