Budweiser has teamed up with musician and environmental advocate Professor Green for Earth Day 2021 to raise awareness of the simple changes everyone can make to lead a greener life.
Taking place on April 22 every year, Earth Day is an internationally-recognised day of environmental awareness which aims to drive action and change. This year, Budweiser has singled out Manchester for praise for its sustainability work, as the city works towards its goal of becoming a net zero carbon city.
It comes as research by the brewery has uncovered a sense of “green guilt” in Manchester, meaning people are aware of the damaging affects their actions are having on the environment but are unsure how to help.
Budweiser’s study of 2,000 people has shown 47% of people living in Manchester feel guilty for not doing enough for the environment – with 41% having felt guilty for turning the heating on, and food waste being a major concern for them too.
In response, Budweiser and Professor Green have devised the “Pro Green Guide” containing practical ideas to incorporate into our lives and inspire better choices.
Make responsible choices regarding sustainable meat and fish
Be aware of packaging, say no to plastic and recycling where possible
Buy sustainable products
Fashion:
Go for quality and no quantity when buying clothes
Wash clothes at 30 degrees
At home:
Switch to a green energy provider
Choose appliances with high efficiency ratings
Professor Green – a.k.a. Stephen Manderson – told The Manc how these small changes show how easy it is to make a difference to our perceptions of “green guilt” – but also to reinforce the positive choices that we’re already making.
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“[The guide] is mainly based around all the changes that I implemented in my own life in order to become a little more sustainable.
“It’s really easy to feel like it’s not significant and not going to make a difference because it’s just one person, but if that’s the attitude of everybody there will be no change.”
“I think this is the right way to do things because the worst thing to do is say to someone ‘you’re not doing enough’,” he explains.
“Imagine walking into someone’s life and going ‘right you need to change this this this this and this’, you’re probably going to be met with a ‘f*ck you’, aren’t you?”
https://www.instagram.com/p/CN7-RV4sTry/
So, Professor Green’s partnership with Budweiser is based on a mutual agreement of how important it is to approach huge topics in an accessible way.
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Instead of telling people off and ramming data down necks so much that they lose interest, we should be praising people for the good that they are doing. With positive reinforcement they hope to encourage better choices in the future.
“Nobody’s perfect and it’s not something you can change overnight. I still forget to take my bags to the shops every once in a while, but it’s good to encourage people and show people that there are really small changes that are quite easy to implement,” he says.
“It’s easy to become defeatist and think it’s too little, too late – and it’s scary. You’ve got all these promises being made by governments and our prime minister in the last day in particular, he’s literally just putting lipstick on a pig. He’s dressing things up and it’s crazy.
“We have to be aware of how real this problem is and you have to understand that what someone says isn’t necessarily what’s happening. With the direction the planet is heading it’s important that people stand up and take notice.”
With the campaign slogan reading ‘green by name and green by nature’, Stephen was the perfect partner for Budweiser on the project. But this isn’t the first time Stephen has taken an interest in environmental activism. His awareness has stemmed from his childhood.
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“I grew up a city kid – I grew up in Hackney, just down the road is the London borough of Tower Hamlets where my partner grew up and it’s where I used to spend a lot of time – my dad used to manage a shop. The statistic around there is something like 75% of children have a 5% reduction in lung capacity because of the illegal amount of pollution in the air. It’s terrible,” he explains.
“This is affecting adults as well but it’s affecting kids and having become a father you start to think more about the world that you leave behind.”
But Stephen is hopeful for the younger generations who are the open-minded and more aware ones driving action towards a better future.
Budweiser billboard on the Printworks
Here in Manchester, the city is working hard to become one of the greenest in the world. There are a number of initiatives and schemes like the Council’s ‘Our Manchester Strategy’ which hope to put Manchester on top by 2025.
In 2016, the Council promised it would be a 100% zero-carbon city by 2050 – but has since revised this date to 2038 since they’ve consistently met their targets.
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On the campaign, Stephen says we need to have open and frank conversations on a local community level, as this is where most change occurs.
“The more aware people become the better the decisions they’ll make,” says Stephen. “With the platform that Budweiser has, the platform that I have, the platform that Manchester has – and The Manc – there’s a lot to be done and I think it’s a conversation that we have to keep having.”
“It’s the same with the work I do around mental health, it’s not a conversation we should stop having. It’s not a case of ‘okay everyone’s aware now, we can go back to how things were’, because how things were were not great.”
Sustainability is a hot topic for Budweiser who, since January 2021, have been brewing every can, bottle and keg of their beer using renewable energy from wind and solar sources.
The $1 billion dollar investment into renewables has meant that The Budweiser Brewing Group now generates enough renewable electricity in the UK to power the brewing operations of not only Budweiser but also Bud Light, Stella Artois, Corona and Becks.
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So, what better way to toast Earth Day and our city’s sustainability achievements than with a zero-carbon beer.
Cheers, Manchester!
News
30 years ago, the IRA detonated a 1,500kg lorry bomb on Corporation Street in the heart of Manchester – here’s the story
Georgina Pellant
Today marks three whole decades since an explosion from the inside of a lorry parked on Corporation Street shattered windows and destroyed buildings across the city centre.
Causing an evisceration that stretched for miles, when the 1,500 kilogram IRA bomb went off in 1996, it was the biggest detonation in Great Britain since the Second World War.
Following the explosion, the city fell silent – leaving rack, rubble and ruin in its wake. Famously, one red post box was left standing – today fitted with a memorial plaque in remembrance of the tragedy.
It seems scary to think that back then, most people could only stand there, watch on and worry.
The bomb caused an estimated £700 million worth of damage to Manchester’s infrastructure and economy, and over a quarter of a century later, locals still tell the stories of where they were when it went off – and of the devastation it left behind.
Notably, one resident of the Cromford Court maisonettes on top of the Arndale – a 77-year-old RAF veteran suffering from the flu – didn’t even bother to get up when the telephone warning to evacuate hit, considering himself to have survived much worse feats during his time in military service.
Having been a rear gunner in a Lancaster in the war, he reportedly told police and authorities “he was buggered if he was going to let a small bomb affect him.”
In subsequent years, Danny O’Neill has become a part of an urban legend surrounding the bomb as his staggering story has been told time and time again.
Around 90 minutes prior to the detonation, the Provisional Irish Republican Army had telephoned in warnings – meaning that around 75,000 people were able to be evacuated from the area before the bomb went off from the back of a van.
However, the bomb squad were unable to defuse it in time, leading to over 200 injuries from people still left in the area.
Thankfully, despite those injuries, there were no fatalities, and many of those reported traumas came from the shattering of thousands of windows and other damage to buildings in which unsuspecting people were getting on with their days.
Several buildings near the explosion were damaged beyond repair and had to be demolished, while many more were closed for months for structural repairs, and this prompted the biggest regeneration of Manchester city centre ever – something that is still continuing to this day, arguably at a more rapid rate than ever.
The city lay dormant for days after the explosion, as people came to terms with what had happened and kept their distance. Many moved out of the centre for a period of time, while many more simply decided not to visit for fear of another incident.
It was a desolate place, eerily quiet, and in need of some serious TLC.
According to Home Office statistics, an estimated 400 businesses within half a mile (0.8 km) of the 1996 blast were affected, 40% of which did not recover.
Credit: Manchester Libraries
Market Street – near the explosion and at that time the second-busiest shopping street in the UK – was considered by some a “fearful” place, and one that was to be “avoided like the plague”.
The prospect of pulling Manchester’s bustling city centre out of its darkest depression was not casually approached by those in charge.
It was acknowledged as a mammoth task from the get-go, but Greater Manchester has never let anything get in its way. Despite how steep the hill is that we’re standing at the base of, we always manage to reach the peak, ready to go again.
Manchester City Council green-light new venue at Medlock Square, with Mamma Mia! The Party to open the immersive space
Danny Jones
The smash-hit ‘Mamma Mia: The Party’ is set to land in Manchester next year as the maiden event of another brand-new space set to open as part of the upcoming Medlock Square development.
Etihad Campus has seen a lot of moving pieces over the past few years, be it the building of Co-op Live, the ongoing expansion of Man City’s home ground, the soon-to-launch hotel attached to the stadium and now Medlock.
But those in control of the land are content with stopping there; this looks to be just the start of a whole new evolution for the East Manchester area, with an as yet untitled new immersive arts, experience and events venue also set to join the new slate of projects.
You see another glimpse of the purpose-built mini arena, of sorts, down below.
With plans having now been approved by the City Council, the ‘immersive’ space will be situated between the Etihad, Co-op Live and Medlock Square itself, holding up to 600 guests per performance.
Currently set to open in late 2027, following the rest of the square’s launch window being fully rolled out, we still don’t know the name of this next addition, but the structure itself will dovetail with the surrounding buildings and areas as part of seasonal activations, live shows and sports screenings, as well as pop-ups, brand collaborations and more.
Looping back, the interactive, multimedia extravaganza that is ‘Mamma Mia! The Party’ will finally be making its Manc debut as part of the 10th anniversary of the all-singing, all-dancing and even all-dining in-demand production.
As per an official press release from the Medlock Square media team, the show will combine “live music, theatre, food and storytelling” and “offer visitors an unforgettable night out.”
The original UK production at The O2 in London has now surpassed more than 1,500 performances, with a total of 700k guests attending these shows in 110 countries across the globe. Safe to say it’s rather popular.
As for Medlock Square and the surrounding Etihad Campus, Manchester City supporters have also been given another look at the soon-to-open, immersive hotel tie-in experience.
With a skywalk, rooftop bar, a new MCFC shop and various other bits set to spill out onto Medlock Square, it all feels like a period of wholesale changes over in the blue half of the city – especially with the football club bidding farewell to their manager Pep Guardiola after more than a decade.
Following the new and improved North Stand being named after him in the first of many tributes, the City Football Group (CFG) are also set to commission a statue in his honour over the coming months.
Meanwhile, Medlock Square is also due to open later this year, although an official completion date has not been confirmed.
You can stay up to date with all the latest on Mamma Mia! The Part’s Manchester shows right HERE.
Not forgetting a brand-new women’s football facility, too, there is so much stuff going on over at the Etihad that it can be hard to keep track, but here’s the latest look at some of the rooms set to feature in the hotel of the same name.
Hannah Starkie -
23rd April 2021 
