We celebrate pesticide-free play areas!

We have been celebrating after Leicester City Council agreed to stop spraying herbicide in and around children’s play areas!

As you'll know if you read this blog regularly, we have been campaigning for the city’s parks to go pesticide-free for five years. In that time, the Council have reduced the amount of spraying and they have been looking at alternatives, but they haven't stopped using glyphosate. Towards the end of 2025, we contacted Councillors Geoff Whittle and Vi Dempster to express our concerns about the continued use of glyphosate near to where children are playing. The Global Glyphosate Study, which involves scientists from Europe and the US, found that levels of the chemical previously considered to be 'safe' caused multiple types of cancer in test animals. One of the researchers stated: "The findings from this carefully conducted study...[are] a powerful reminder of human infants’ great vulnerability to toxic chemicals". Children are more vulnerable to pesticide poisoning because their skin is more permeable.

We also shared research showing that glyphosate harms bees’ digestive systems and damages their ability to keep their colonies cool, which can be devastating in our increasingly hot summers.

We met with Councillor Whittle and a council officer in December to explain our concerns about glyphosate endangering Leicester’s children. The journal article that had previously been used to claim that glyphosate was safe was retracted by the publisher last year, because they discovered that the company that makes glyphosate had been involved in the research. As with tobacco and fossil fuels, the companies who make this product have been trying to hide the harm that it is doing.

The City Council took some time to consider our suggestion and then they got in touch in January to let us know they have agreed and will stop spraying in and around the play areas this year. We are delighted that they listened and made this decision - we celebrated with cookies at our last meeting! We hope that they will take this opportunity to leave more wild edges in the city’s green spaces.

We are also encouraging gardeners across Leicestershire to stop spraying, to protect everybody’s health and to help wildlife. You can pledge to go pesticide-free in your garden here. We are planning to create a map of pesticide-free gardens using the postcodes of those who have taken the pledge.

Support growing in Leicester for Planet Over Profit campaign

Support for the Planet Over Profit campaign continues to grow across Leicester. This national campaign is calling for a new law, the Business, Human Rights & Environment Act, to hold companies accountable for harm caused in their supply chain and to protect habitats, workers' rights and the rights of indigenous people. At the moment, it is too easy for big companies to claim ignorance of what is happening in the places where they source their materials and their goods and this allows them to do enormous harm. We need to hold them to account. (Read more about this campaign using the 'corporate accountability' tag on this blog.)

Five more Leicester-based organisations have now signed our open letter to MPs, bringing the total to thirteen supporting organisations:

• Global Justice Leicester and Leicestershire
• Leicester Quaker Meeting
• Pioneer Parishes
• Christians Aware
• Stoneygate Baptist Church

We are continuing to contact organisations to ask if they would like to sign the open letter. If you know of a place of worship, local business or community group that might be interested in supporting this campaign, please let us know at leicesterfoe@gmail.com . 

We're also continuing to collect support from individuals! Today we've been at the University of Leicester Students Union, as part of their Green Week, talking to students about the campaign and collecting signed postcards to take to MPs. If you haven't managed to come to one of our stalls to talk to us in person, you can still sign the online petition to show your support for fair supply chains. 

Book Review - Is a River Alive? By Robert Macfarlane

Robert Macfarlane has worked as a Fellow at Emmanuel College University of Cambridge for many years, but in a parallel life has become well known as a champion of English nature writing. He is also a practitioner in this field, writing accounts of journeys on foot through the countryside and collaborating with illustrator Jacky Morris on nature books for children. He has also co-written albums with musician Johnny Flynn. Every few years, however, he seems to feel the need to test his stamina to the limit on an ambitious project to explore an idea or special place and this book is the result of his latest excursions.

The notion of whether an entity such as a river could be held to have rights which could be upheld in a court of law has become a pressing matter in many countries - particularly in the Global South, where communities rely on rivers and they are under threat from external forces such as mining companies.

Macfarlane visits three different places in Ecuador, south India and Quebec in Canada, to meet and journey with environmentalists who are actively trying to protect river sources in their countries and challenge government policy. In between times, he describes his own special water course near his home in Cambridge, charting its history from its earliest known time and experience during an extensive drought.

In Ecuador, Macfarlane visits the River of the Cedars which flows through the Andean Cloud Forest. This received government protection after a long fight by environmentalists and activists. He hears their stories and encounters its wonders first hand – stretching himself as former mountaineer. He meets Giuliana, who is a fungi specialist and has found many new specimens in the area and has campaigned for its protection.

In India, he travels to Chennai on the coast of southern India and is introduced to rivers which are clinically dead through pollution and others which have been officially written out of existence by the state authorities in order to allow extensive development on the sites. At every monsoon, however, the ghosts of the rivers return to their ancestral places creating devastating flooding. There he meets Yuvan, who has become an environmentalist after an abusive childhood and found purpose and meaning in his work. He encourages volunteers to protect what is left and inspires the children he teaches to care about the birds and other wildlife – fighting against a state government which is largely indifferent to his concerns. Macfarlane helps one night by reburying turtle eggs in a different area of the beach to where they have been originally laid, as the temperature there is too hot to allow incubation because of climate change.

The third trip takes him to eastern Canada to a river called the Mutehekau Shipu, or Magpie River, which is fully alive but under threat of damming by the local hydro-electric company. There he meets Rita Mestokosho, a poet and elder of the local Innu community who have fought to protect the Magpie River and created a statement giving the river official legal rights. MacFarlane, along with three companions, is resolved to kayak down part of the river and experience it at first hand. He is given permission to do so and has an incredible unforgettable journey.

This is a fascinating and thought-provoking book to read and Macfarlane pushed himself to the limit to experience it – he became ill after his trip to Ecuador and came close to drowning on the Canadian river, but he provides the full philosophical background on the movement to give rivers rights, which is being taken up by activists in Britain to protect our rivers from pollution.

His acknowledgements at the end lists the scores of people he knows and works with around the world who are active on this issue where global justice and environmental issues meet.

Review by Alison Skinner

Listen to Robert Mcfarlane talk about the book on YouTube. 

Launch of our pesticide-free garden pledge

The day we have been planning for a while is here - we have launched our pledge for gardeners to go pesticide-free! Pledge to go pesticide-free

Pesticides (including herbicides, insecticides etc), are harmful to human health, wildlife and pets. If you've been reading our blog for a while, you'll know that we've been trying to persuade Leicester City Council to stop using glyphosate in our parks and green spaces for almost five years. They've made some progress in reducing their usage of this harmful chemical, but they are still spraying. We want to show them that Leicester's gardeners can manage without pesticides, so they should too! Can you help us by signing our pledge? It's not too late to make a new year's resolution for 2026. The thank you email has some advice on how to look after your garden without using chemicals. And please do sign even if you've been gardening organically for a long time. We are planning to use the postcodes (without linking them to people's names) to create a map of pesticide-free gardens across the city. If you're able to share with local friends and family after signing, that would help us to collect more pledges.

Book Review - Nature Needs You by Hannah Bourne-Taylor

This book is an amazing read about one woman’s (Hannah Bourne-Taylor’s) fight to get swift bricks put into all new build houses. It tells the story of how Hannah’s love for swifts makes her promise to help them, as they are now on the endangered list of birds in trouble in the UK. Hannah’s promise leads her on a journey to battle with building companies and the Government and makes her become a campaigner extraordinaire battling to fulfil her promise to this tiny bird. 

The book begins on May Day 2021, with Hannah Bourne-Taylor ‘lie(ing) on her back among the fast-growing blades, the May sun warm on her face for the first time this year’. She is waiting to see the swifts that she loves return; she ‘scans the sky, ears ready to hear their screams’. When she hears them, she cries out herself , ‘Welcome home!!!!’, rejoicing as this 45-gram bird makes its return flight from Africa to Britain to breed. 

Swifts are an amazing miracle of nature as once they hatch out and leave the nest they spend the rest of their time in flight – they eat, drink, bathe, breed and sleep all on the wing. They make the long journey every year to southern Africa, crossing the Sahara Desert twice every year, not landing like other birds. They only land to lay their eggs and feed their chicks when they get back to our shores. They build their nests in holes in walls, under the eaves of houses, churches or old buildings. In the past, they built nests in caves and cliff faces and high trees but now, due to those habitats being mainly lost, they look for old buildings. Once the nest has been built the swifts will return to the same site every year. 

As Hannah Bourne-Taylor tells us, the problem is that people repair their roofs and replace their soffit boards with plastic ones, which means the nests are dislodged or holes filled in and cannot be re-built. It also means that the returning swifts cannot access their nest any more so fly again and again at the wall searching for last year’s nest, smashing their small bodies against the wall, often until they die trying. This was one of the bits in the book which I found really difficult to read!! 

In the book, Hannah shares with the reader her campaigning journey to launch a petition to gain 100,000 signatures which she thinks naively will automatically mean the Government will discuss this in Parliament. She walks through the streets of London, (one of the highlights of the book), dressed only in a painted-on feather costume to Speakers Corner in Hyde Park and makes her ‘Feather speech’ to launch her petition. She gains lots of media attention and then works tirelessly over the next 6 months to get all of the signatures. Having succeeded the Government then hit her with a body blow as they said they would decide whether they would debate the petition or not! I think this is one of her first lessons in how tough campaigning can be! 

The debate does go ahead – asking for the Government to pass a law that all new builds include a swift brick so that swifts can access it and make a small nest under the eaves of the house. Unfortunately, the Government decided to say no, they said ‘we should not impose conditions and ensure that planning permission are subject to additional and unreasonable requirements to accommodate species that are not present in an area while creating financial burdens to comply with and to discharge conditions’ bearing in mind the cost of the swift brick to a builder is less than £20.00! Also the swifts won’t be present in an area if there is nowhere for them to nest? Mmm – a shame the Government don’t think about that… 

Hannah’s battle continued and is still on-going – with the Government still saying ‘no’ – they say that builders can do this voluntarily and also local county/district councils can ask builders to include the bricks in new builds and can include swift bricks in their local building planning policies. As this is not a law, then every new build in every village or town means someone has to request this…. An on-going battle by an unhelpful Government especially as every builder is going to say ‘no’ as it would cost them more money to implement. 

An amazing read – learning about one woman’s sacrifices and battle to make the Government listen. Her journey to become a campaigner and her story ends with lots of information about how you can help or become a champion to protect this tiny 45-gram miracle of nature. It also has information in the book about what a ‘Swift Brick’ is – hopefully lots of builders will read this book and it will make them see the logic in including them in new builds! 

Definitely worth reading – enjoy!! 

Review by Melanie Wakley

Update on our Planet Over Profit campaign: more organisations support good business

We are delighted to be starting 2026 by announcing that four more Leicester-based organisations are supporting the national ‘Planet Over Profit’ campaign by signing our local open letter to Leicester MPs calling for a Business, Human Rights & Environment Act. This new law would hold companies to account for any harm caused in their supply chain and protect important habitats, workers’ rights and the rights of indigenous people. Companies should be responsible for ensuring that their profits don’t come at the expense of people and planet, but existing laws aren’t holding them to account.

The four latest signatories include a Muslim environmental group, a community centre, a small business and a church:

• Green Guardians
• Highfields Centre
• Currant Affairs
• Christchurch Clarendon Park (Baptist/Methodist LEP Church)

You can read the full text of our open letter and see who had already signed in the previous blog post.

We are also still collecting support from individuals, through postcards (which you can colour in!) and a digital petition to MPs. Please sign our petition if you live in Leicester and share with your family and friends! And if you own a business or are part of a community organisation that might want to support this campaign, please get in touch with us: leicesterfoe@gmail.com.