First York launches £20,000 fund to help indie businesses go green
Bus operator First York has launched a £20,000 fund to help small businesses go green.
The York Go-Greener Fund aims to help shops and leisure businesses to encourage eco-friendly high street spending and boost customer-led sustainable growth.
The purpose of the fund is to “support plans by independent owners and small firms in consumer sectors to build on environmental practices and products that directly appeal to customers”.
The York Go-Greener Fund will make awards of £2,000 to ten successful applicants.
Videos showcasing these businesses will then go to a people’s vote with the winner getting the chance to be featured in a film about the region’s sustainable traders.
This is being made by the York & North Yorkshire Growth Hub and includes some of the world’s leading voices on climate change.
Applications open today (Monday, 9 May) until 31 May 2022 with entries submitted on a dedicated page of the First York website.
The bus company has teamed up with the FSB and the York & North Yorkshire Growth Hub to draw up the criteria for applying and how money from the Fund should be used.
The FSB’s development manager Carolyn Frank and Sue Jefferson, chair of the business board at York & North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership will help judge entries on a panel including First York managing director, Ian Humphreys.
He said: “Thriving, successful independent small businesses on the streets of the city and our outlying communities will always be essential to York’s prosperity.
“We know one of the challenges for them and others of all sizes, is how to achieve growth at the same time as helping to reduce the carbon footprint of operations and customers to meet regional and national environmental targets.
““Sustainability in products and services is increasingly valued by customers and we want to help small business owners by giving them a financial boost to build on what they’re doing and put new plans into action.
“I would encourage York’s small business owners to get thinking how the fund could help them and submit an entry quickly. There is not long to get applications in as we want to be able to make the awards in June so they can get started as soon as possible.”