THERE was good and bad news for Bolton Council when the national Green Apple Environment Awards were announced.

The good news is that it received an engraved trophy as winner of the National Bronze Award. The bad news is that it failed to scoop the top prize, which included an environmental study trip for two in Nova Scotia, Canada.

But Bolton did well to scoop the third prize because its environmental team were up against 150 local authorities across Britain.

Peter Cathery, environmental team leader, said that the council's work with Bolton Environmental Forum had made up a large part of its entry to the competition.

He said: "This includes raising general environmental awareness through road shows and leaflets, to quite specific projects aimed at controlling our environmental impact."

The council has recently completed a survey of its 15,000 employees to establish the level of their environmental awareness.

Mr Cathery went on: "The different groups are now committed to preparing their own action plans for the environment which includes things like better use of energy and the more effective management of waste.

"We have also had a Green Week where staff were encouraged to use different transport methods to get into work."

A spokesman for the competition said: "The Green Apple campaign is now in its fifth year and it is very noticeable that the standards improve significantly each time."

"Judging becomes increasingly difficult and the council has done extremely well to earn this tribute in the face of some extremely tough competition from all over the country.

"We now hope that other councils will learn from their outstanding example and follow their lead on the environment front."

The Green Apple Award scheme is organised by The Green Organisation, with support from the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, Municipal Journal magazine and contract publishers EMP.

The outright winner of the award for environmental best practice, and that Nova Scotia prize trip, was Bath and North East Somerset Council.

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