Keep Scotland Beautiful is an environmental charity based in Scotland, which aims “to make Scotland a cleaner, greener and more sustainable place to live, work and visit.” The organisation campaigns and educates on a range of environmental issues including climate change and litter reduction.
History
Keep Scotland Beautiful was founded as an independent Scottish charity in 2000, bringing together a range of environmental initiatives and activities including Waste Aware Scotland, Eco-Schools Scotland, People and Places Programme, Beach Awards and Beautiful Scotland. The organisation’s origins lie in the 1960s, with the ‘Beautiful Scotland in Bloom’ campaign run by the Scottish Tourist Board and the Scottish Women’s Rural Institute. After this, under the auspices of Keep Britain Tidy, its focus in Scotland included educating young people about the environment through the Eco-Schools programme. Since becoming an independent Scottish charity, it has continued to campaign on a range of environmental issues including local environment quality and climate change.
Timeline
2000s
2000: Keep Scotland Beautiful is founded, bringing together a range of environmental campaigns, initiatives and awards.
2002: The charity launches ‘Have Some Pride’, a campaign aimed at reducing litter by encouraging people to take pride in their local area.
2003: The charity’s Local Environmental Audit and Management System becomes a national benchmarking tool for local authorities to audit the quality and cleanliness of their local environments.
2004: Along with the Scottish Government and SEPA, Keep Scotland Beautiful launches the national flytipping campaign Dumb Dumpers, voiced by Richard Wilson.
2005: Former Chief Executive John Summers is awarded an OBE for services to the environment.
2008: Scotland’s first Litter Summit is hosted by the charity, attended by MSPs and members of the Scottish Government. One of the outcomes was to investigate a deposit return system for Scotland.
2008: In partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society, the charity launches It’s Your Neighbourhood, a community initiative aimed at helping gardening groups make improvements to their local areas’ environments.
2010s
2010: Keep Scotland Beautiful presents the 1000th first-time Green Flag for Eco-Schools Scotland, celebrating the work of young people to protect the environment.
2013: Keep Scotland Beautiful awards its first Green Flags for parks, intended to celebrate well-kept green spaces.
2014: The organisation creates Scotland’ first National Award for Environmental Excellence®, allowing organisations to benchmark their environmental performance.
2015: Following the launch of the One Planet Picnic initiative the previous year, the charity launches their national Pocket Garden design competition for schools across Scotland.
2016: The charity publishes a report revealing growing levels of litter, dog fouling and other antisocial environmental behaviours across Scotland. An update report was published in October 2017, detailing how these trends had developed over the preceding year.
2016: The charity launches its ‘Give Your Litter a Lift’ campaign to tackle litter levels along Scotland’s roadsides.
2018: Keep Scotland Beautiful becomes the first Climate Literate organisation in Scotland, as recognised by The Carbon Literacy Project.
2018: The charity launches several behaviour change campaigns aimed at tackling unsustainable consumption and its effects: Upstream Battle, My Beach Your Beach and Cup Movement.
2019: The charity launches, with funding from the Scottish Government, - a programme aimed at secondary school pupils and teachers to help them understand climate change and the actions they can take to combat the climate crisis.
Programmes
Keep Scotland Beautiful manages several environment-related campaigns and programmes in Scotland. These include Eco-Schools Scotland, Climate Ready Classrooms, Clean Up Scotland, the Green Flag Award, the Beach Awards, Beautiful Scotland, the Climate Challenge Fund, the National Award for Environmental Excellence, Carbon Literacy Training and Heritage projects and Canal College.
