The Green Edge is Changing
Compliments of the season to all our subscribers. We have a few changes for 2025 to tell you about...
The Green Edge has now been around for a full three years. From our first toes in the water, writing about things like the business of climate change, systems thinking and other things we were seeing around us and relating to what we referred to at the time as ‘Skilling Up for Net Zero’, we’ve learned a lot and expanded our scope way beyond what we originally foresaw. We’ve added things along the way: shortly after start up, in January 2022 we published our first monthly reports roundup (more about which we’ll talk later); July 2022 saw our first weekly podcast; and more recently we’ve added guest posts, special podcasts, and commissioned content. We’ve even been asked to contribute to the efforts of others too, and are proud be credited for building content for such valuable resources as IEMA’s Green Careers Hub and Enginuity’s Future Skills Hub.
Not that we’ve rested on our laurels, mind. The world of sustainability (we tend to talk about that more than ‘net zero’ or ‘green’ stuff these days) is much too important and interesting to just sit back and let happen. Let’s face it—if everyone does that (like too many people who in our humble opinion should know better seem to be doing right now) it won’t happen.
So, with that in mind, as we come to our last post of the year, we’re looking ahead to 2025 and asking what we can do to best contribute to the cause. For those who remember, we did the same this time last year (and the year before that) and our focal points for 2024—on place-based best practice, competences for sustainability and hearts and minds—resulted in some fascinating conversations and contributions from folks like Your Energy Your Way, Winchester Action on Climate Crisis, The Manufacturing Technology Centre and the author and award-winning journalist Lisa Bennett.
So, a new focus for 2025? Well, no, actually. In a political landscape where the last few years has seen well-intentioned initiatives changing as regularly as prime ministers (we’ll see how long this one lasts), it seems to us to be more important than ever that real action for sustainability is taken on the ground, by people who are good at it, and that those people carry everyone else along with them. The politicians might be having fun talking up the big stuff, but there’s real work to be done right here.
Image: HM Gov
So, no real change in The Green Edge’s focus. But there will be some changes in the way we deliver it.
Of all the comments and emails we receive on our written content, the most prevalent relate to our monthly reports roundups. We have been asked, for example, whether we can point to a few reports—out of the hundred-odd we read each month—which we regard as most valuable and salient to the sustainability-conscious but time-pressed reader. Perhaps we could even select a ‘publication of the month’? And how about mixing our opinions on each report with more objective, categorised and—ideally—tagged summaries? Some subscribers have even indicated that this might be a service worth paying for.
To date, our response has been organic in nature: from March 2024 we’ve been marking our top selection with a type of wagon-wheel device thingy (֎). Alongside, the publications we regard as the most important do tend to get mentioned in dispatches during the podcasts. But, we feel the time has come to make it a bit more, shall we say, structured. Therefore, starting in January 2025, we are proud to announce…
The Green Edge Digest
The Green Edge Digest will be a monthly review of the top reports and other publications for Sustainability, Net Zero and the Green Economy, and will consist of the following monthly posts:
The Green Edge Message In A Bottle
A short emailed post to all subscribers going out on the first working day of each month. Contains a synopsis—common themes, observations and thumbnails of top reads—of all the publications we have reviewed over the previous month.
The Green Edge Take
A re-branding of our existing Reports Roundup, contained in a single post each month and available online.
The Green Edge Top Reads
An emailed post, going out at the same time as The Green Edge Message In A Bottle. A more comprehensive key points analysis of our top reads of the month.
The Green Edge Digest Update
For those with time for a longer read: a listing of all the publications reviewed in the previous month, categorised and tagged and added to The Green Edge Digest Database (under development). Available online.
Now, let’s be upfront and clear about this: The Green Edge is going premium. While everything we described above will be free in January (and probably February too), our intention is to bundle up The Take, the Top Reads and the Digest Update—plus access to the Digest Database—into a premium service. To that end, we will be inviting pledges for paid subscriptions from January. We promise it will be reasonable and we hope many our existing free subscribers will deem it worth a few quid each month.
But hold! That’s not to say The Green Edge is disappearing lock, stock and barrel behind a dreaded paywall. The Green Edge Podcast will remain exactly as it is—we have plenty of feedback on that to indicate our listeners value our weekly meanderings and musings.
What will be scaled down a little though—in frequency though not in spirit—will be our free-subscription written posts. Instead of a post each week, we’re scaling that back to two per month, as follows:
The Green Edge Pick Of The Crop
To be published and emailed to all subscribers on the first Thursday after the Message In A Bottle / Top Reads drop. A feature article focused around our selection of numero uno read of the month.
The Green Edge Third Thursday
A ‘free-form’ post around what’s catching our attention at the present time. As ever—and with all our other content—we’ll be looking through the green skills lens and examining what we see in the context of place-based best practice, competences for sustainability, and hearts and minds.
We hope that all our subscribers will find value and utility in whichever level of subscription they choose. Our first posts of next year are scheduled to go out on 6th January and we look forward to another year of discovery, enlightenment and—hopefully—progression towards a sustainable future for the planet.
Until then, we wish you a peaceful and fulfilling Yuletide season.