I do love receiving Born Free's magazine, Wildlife Times.   There is always lots of interesting news and information in it, and amongst the pages to delve into is their "Business Friends" page.

So I was very interested and delighted to read that the Hotel Cafe Royal in London made Born Free their charity partner to celebrate the festive season.

Their fundrasiing activities included a voluntary £1 donation on all guest bills during the period, and every child who stayed on the 25th December received an Adopt a Polar Bear gift pack.

Adopt a Polar Bear from Born Free here

Apart from raising funds, this must have been a great way to raise awareness amongst guests and hotel staff of the vital work Born Free does.

The Born Free Foundation is an international wildlife charity.  It works around the world to stop  stop individual wild animal suffering and protect threatened species in the wild.  Actors Bill Travers MBE and Virginia McKenna OBE founded the charity, whilst their son Will Travers OBE is the charity's President.

Thank you, Hotel Cafe Royal!  It's good to see business working to help wildlife.  They also hosted an evening with Sir David Attenborough back in November 2017, which involved discussion followed by dinner. 

For more information on Born Free, visit their website

If you want to adopt an animal (which would make a great gift for an animal lover), click here.  They have a wide range of animals to adopt, from big cats to pangolins!

In the middle of all the news about plastic, Iceland has announced that it is working to be plastic free across its own label range by 2023.

It's going to use technology to create a range of packaging of paper and pulp trays, along with paper bags, which are recyclable via domestic waste collection or in-store recycling facilities.

Iceland has removed plastic disposable straws from its own label range already - and its new food ranges will have paper-based as opposed to plastic food trays.

I think this is an important move.  The Plastics Market Situation Report in the spring of 2016 said that one million tonnes of plastic are generated by supermarkets in the UK every year.

And it looks like Iceland will have a lot of consumer support.   In a survey of 5,000 consumers by OnePoll back in December 2017, there was a clear interest from the public in reducing plastic.

• 80% of those surveyed said they would  endorse a supermarket's move to go plastic free
• 91% said they would be more likely to encourage friends and family to shop there 
• Nearly 68% think other supermarkets should follow Iceland's lead.

Plastic entering the world's oceans not only puts the world's marine life at risk;  it also enters the food chain through the sea food we eat.   

We need to stop the rot and reduce our use of plastic before it's too late.   Iceland are making a good start - so what will other supermarkets do to follow suit?

The BBC has put together a round up of what Britain's supermarkets are doing to fight the plastic plague....

Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Tesco's, Lidl, the Co-op, M&S, Waitrose, Iceland, Asda, Aldi -

Find out what supermarkets are all doing about plastic from the BBC here.   

In January 2018, the UK Government kicked off the year by backing a project to create a new Northern Forest.  

The Government will provide £5.7 million to increase tree cover in this area.  The project will cost £500m over 25 years, and the balance will be raised by charity. 

The Woodland Trust is leading the scheme with local Community Forests. 

The project will see 50 million trees over 25 years.  They will stretch from Liverpool right over to Hull, embracing the major cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Chester and Hull alongside other major towns along the M62 corridor. 

Shared from New World 360

According to the Woodland Trust, benefits of this new forest include:

• Improving air quality in towns and cities
• Mitigating flood risk in key catchments
• Supporting the rural economy through tourism, recreation and timber production
• Connecting people with nature
• Helping to delivery better health and wellbeing for people by providing access to green spaces
• Providing a rich habitat for wildlife to thrive

Woodland cover is at just 7.6% there, below the UK average of 13%.  The EU has an average of 44%. 

Tree planting rates are very low with there being only 700 hectares against the Government’s target of 5,000 hectares a year, so this project should help.

However, while it is one thing to create new forest, it is another to destroy ancient woodland which the Government is hell bent on, in part to create room for this ridiculous and incredibly expensive HS2 railway.  

If this Government really cared about forests and woodlands, it would stop destroying ancient woodland and stop routing the high-speed train route through them.  

Five Community Forests that sit within the proposed areas for the Northern Forest – you can find out more about the Community Forests here. 

The river Ganges is a lifeline for over 500 million people across India. The river is workshipped as Ganga Mata, the Divine Mother.   She has sustained life for thousands of years.

As this clip from You Tube shows (thank you to the BBC.co.uk for it), the Ganges is in trouble, thanks to human use of plastic.

Wherever we are in the world, we all need to try to cut down on the amount of plastic we use and look for alternatives.   

I've made a start using bamboo toothbrushes and I love them!  If we can each look at what we use plastic for and see what alternatives we can use, that would be a great start.

I'm off to buy a blueberry bush to put in a pot in the garden - that will save the plastic packaging they've come in before.