The Eden Bulletin

Updated: 6 June 2026

What does Eden do? A 7-min video here.

Two of the UK's greatest passions are a love of walking and a hatred of litter. Eden provides the scaffolding to bring these two passions together, resulting in a simple yet effective way of keeping one's parish pristine all year round.

The Vision is a #PristinePlanet

It’s somewhat pointless keeping a parish here and there pristine, so the strategy is to fix the planet parish by parish. The Ocean Cleanup is cleaning the oceans while intercepting rubbish coming from the world’s largest rivers. We implement the #PristineParish Environmental Stewardship Program upstream to prevent rubbish entering the waterways in the first place.

That needs funding.

Sponsorship Opportunities

We offer sponsors the opportunity to purchase #PristinePlanet Credits to fund stewardship across a portfolio of parishes. A sponsor commits to funding a defined number of parishes for a defined number of years. For example:

The Five Conditions

for Mission Success

Mission success is conditional on the #PristineParish Program being transformative, achievable, sustainable, scalable and verifiable.

✓ Transformative: Our twice-weekly regime means there is 98.08% less litter on any one day than in parishes that organise a biannual litter pick. Calculation here.

✓ Achievable: The goal is for a minimum of 70% of the twice-weekly patrols to be done. Results for 2025: Upper Rissington 82%; Little Rissington 100%.

✓ Sustainable: Once set up, a #PristineParish Program is practically a perpetual motion machine, only needing an occasional touch on the tiller by Eden.

✓ Scalable: Eden and Regen, a US-based ecocredit registry, have devised an Environmental Stewardship Credit to fund the expansion of the #PristineParish Program.

✓ Verifiable: Every patrol is logged and reported at year end to a Validation and Verification Body (VVB). The VVB determines whether credits can be issued.

There can be no doubt that the #PristineParish Program is transformative, both of the environment and of community wellbeing. What else keeps us pounding the beat?

The pilot parishes in the Rissingtons showed that a twice-weekly regime is achievable, because we re-purpose the daily dog-walk or weekly constitutional as community service.

Eden or some other similar entity need only press-gang pikkers from time to time and allocate Duke of Edinburgh Award volunteers to make a #PristineParish Program infinitely sustainable, as grabbers and vests get passed on from retiring pikkers to newcomers.

The program is scalable thanks to the invention of the #PristinePlanet Credit Class that rewards environmental stewardship in the same way that carbon credits reward carbon sequestration.

The Environmental Stewardship Credit system ensures that every program is verifiable, since litter haul reports are scrutinised by a third party Validation and Verification Body to determine whether the standard of performance has been met.

What’s a #PristinePlanet Credit?

I’ll compare #PristinePlanet Credits to carbon credits, with which you will likely be familiar.

In the same way that carbon credits are purchased by carbon emitters (e.g., airlines) from entities that remove carbon from the air (e.g., landowners who plant trees), so #PristinePlanet Credits can be purchased by packaging emitters (e.g., supermarkets and take-aways) from entities that remove packaging from the ground (e.g., environmental protection organisations).

Eden created the #PristinePlanet Credit Class to accredit methodologies that remove pollutants, including Eden’s own #PristineParish Methodology, which establishes a twice-weekly pollutant removal regime.

Eden or any other entity can now issue credits and advertise them for sale in the Regen Marketplace.

In Business for Good

Eden has been working on further revenue streams. One is selling advertising in the Eden Chronicle.

A Community Interest Company

Eden is a Community Interest Company. A CIC is a purpose-led not-for-profit social enterprise. In Eden’s case, financial returns flow directly from creating environmental benefits and flow back to creating more environmental benefit, while ensuring that dividends are paid to investors sufficient to keep investment flowing in.

The intention is for the market itself to push the new paradigm at a speed only the market can manage.

Why is Revenue Needed?

While the equipment is paid for by the local council as a one-off investment, the costs of running an ever-growing enterprise need to be covered. Eden or any other entity that implements the #PristineParish Methodology are akin to charities in that, while reliant on the kindness of volunteers to do the important work, a whole lot of administration has to be done to keep the show on the road and growing.

Lend support by becoming a #PristinePlanet Patron.

The Eden Engine

After seven years of thinking and tinkering, we’re now a little wiser about how to (a) mobilise and (b) organise a parish such that each new parish becomes an extra cylinder in the Eden Engine of Environmental Regeneration throughout the UK and beyond.

Duke of Edinburgh’s Award

The primary trigger for the involvement of the young is the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DofE). To date there have been 28 DofE #PristineParish Volunteerships in the Rissingtons and Stow.

Youngsters love to keep their home parish litter-free and Eden provides the perfect way to operate to a schedule that matches the DofE regime of an hour per week.

As their Assessor, I write a report on their achievements and learnings.

Message to schools: Contact me if you would like to co-develop a joint DofE/#PP Scheme for your school.