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St Albans Photographer pledges to plant 25 trees for every baby she photographs to offset carbon footprint
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Local businesswoman, Nevina Holland, has been working closely with Ecologi, the leading Climate Action organisation in the UK, to make her small business more sustainable. Her goal, moving forward, is to help tackle the huge issue of Climate Change and she urges many other local businesses to follow in her footsteps using similar ideas that work for them or by simply signing up to Ecologi themselves. As a starting point, she took part in St Albans’ very own Sustainability Festival in May 2021. Nevina who runs Peekaboo Studios in St Albans, specialises in high-end maternity and newborn photography. After running her business for 10 years and, just days ago, achieving title of Child & Family Portrait Photographer of The Year 2021, she has always had a vision for running a sustainable business but never knew where to start. Nevina admitted that not being able to work for the best part of a year as a ‘non essential’ business, during the pandemic, gave her the time she needed to research the changes that she could make in her business in order to make a signifi cant impact on Climate Emergency. This is something that has always been close to her heart.
Through the funding from Peekaboo Studios, Ecologi will help the small business offset its carbon footprint by planting 25 new trees in Madagascar, Mozambique and Nicaragua every time she photographs a newborn. Nevina will name the mini forest of trees that she plants after the family of the baby that she shoots. That family will then be able to track the progress of their trees throughout their lives and even visit the trees if they wanted to!! Ecologi also funds other climate projects around the world. So far, Peekaboo Studios has already helped to turn waste into biogas in Thailand and produce fuel effi cient stoves in Honduras.
Dennis Hettema, Head of Sales at Ecologi Head Quarters says, “We are absolutely delighted to be working with Nevina and look forward to the impact we will be making together.
The trees that Nevina will be planting will continue to counteract climate change for at least 25 years which we believe to be a hopeful message for the future.”
As part of her sustainability drive, Nevina has also started to offer every newborn parent she works with, Mama Bamboo nappy samples to trial, which are more Eco Friendly and natural to use.
Laura, Founder of Mama Bamboo, based in St Albans, says, “Being a professional newborn photographer for the last 10 years, Nevina understands the confl icting desires and pressures of the modern parenting world. She does a fabulous job of introducing all her newborn clients to our Eco Friendly Bamboo based nappies and wipes right at the beginning of their parenting journey in a subtle way without pressing the agenda.”
Master Photographer, Nevina says “I feel so proud to be supporting Ecologi and Mama Bamboo to help save the planet and taking part in this years, Sustainability Festival 2021. I realise that currently, I will never be able to change every aspect of my life to become fully Climate Positive but if I can at least make a start, by taking baby steps like this, then I can feel a sense of achievement that I have started to take some sort of action. The world is not going to save itself so this is the right thing to do and I hope others will join me in this battle.” The Master Photographers Association, the UK’s leading qualifi cation body for professional photographers, have been instrumental in supporting Nevina’s ethical ambition. They have recently launched their own strict Climate Positive Certifi cation Process whereby photographers have to undergo a rigorous submission test to qualify their business as Climate Positive. The fi rst task is to collate a solid Sustainability Policy, which they helped Nevina create. It involved scrutinizing her business from top to bottom to highlight the changes that she could make which would make a big difference in the long run.
Paul Inskip, Chief Operations Offi cer from the MPA says, “Nevina has built upon her ten years and award winning success by embracing sustainability and building climate positive initiatives into the very core of her business. She will be one of the fi rst ever MPA photographers to achieve the new Climate Positive certifi cation for her business.”
Some of the steps, Nevina will be taking:
• Planting 25 trees for every newborn she photographs
• Taking the Climate Positive Certifi cation with the MPA
• Taking part in Hertfordshire’s Sustfest Campaign – 23 May 2021
• Offsetting her carbon footprint through the Ecologi subscription
• Offering Eco Friendly nappies to clients
• Converting one of her cars into a fully electric vehicle
• Changing her Energy Supplier to be one that uses only renewable energy
• Frequently urging her current suppliers to be more Climate Positive
