It's our birthday - the RSC is celebrating 14 years of being riverlutionary!

It’s our birthday! On Saturday 26 November the River Stewardship Company is turning 14!

Since 2008, we’ve been working to look after, restore and revitalise the waterways of Sheffield, Yorkshire and beyond for people, places and wildlife!

Working with us does good!

We’re committed to future-proofing business and society by inspiring, educating and connecting local people to their local patch. As a social enterprise, re-investing profits into our Riverlution CIC enables us to deliver our social value projects and leave a positive legacy wherever we work.

Good for the environment

Everything we do has biodiversity and sustainability at its core - protecting habitats, flood prevention and creating places we can all enjoy.

Good for people

Our Riverlution team engages volunteers, local community groups and businesses to develop a sense of place around their local patch of waterway, whilst positively effecting health and wellbeing. Surplus from every project is reinvested into our volunteer and skills programmes, training the next generation of river stewards!

Good for businesses

Riverlution delivers Corporate Social Responsibility Days and training to help organisations achieve their social value and environmental goals.

12 Days of Riverlution!

Working with councils, contractors and communities, the waterway maintenance projects we undertake help support our Riverlution CIC to deliver a mighty 12 community ‘River Clean Up’ days throughout the year!

To celebrate 14 years’ of this ‘riverlutionary’ work, we are delighted to add 2 more volunteer river clean up days to the Riverlution calendar - taking the total number of days of all-weather wellie-wearing, debris-clearing, litter-picking and tree work to 14, to take place before the end of Spring 2023!

Geoffrey Guy, Riverlution Manager says of the good created so far and what could be next -

This year, Riverlution and the RSC have completed a project on the River Dearne that creates riparian habitat strips, plants trees, protects riverbanks, reduces sediment run off into the river and removes invasive species. This project has engaged many groups of volunteers totalling over 300 hours of voluntary service aimed at this project alone.

On a wider scale across the rivers Dearne, Don, Sheaf and Porter, we have facilitated over 1000 hours of additional voluntary work with labour provided by local companies and environmental groups. Throughout this work, approximately 16 tonnes of litter, debris and invasive plants have been removed from watercourses. In addition, our Sheffield stewardship skills scheme, kindly sponsored by Gripple, has allowed us to provide another 1000 hours of environmental volunteer opportunities, formal training and work experience to people preparing for careers in the environmental sector.

Including our celebratory extra 2 days of volunteer opportunities, we have 5 more volunteer days to offer before April 2023 and would love for people to 'join the movement, join the riverlution' and contact us to get involved!"

Brendon Wittram, MD - River Stewardship Company encourages local businesses to join the movement:

Our Riverlution programme is developing a unique connection between business and communities, aspiring to a sustainable future for all and giving so much to the people, rivers and wildlife of our region. The Riverlution has started and we can continue to grow this innovative movement, allowing us to expand our reach and forge our links with business through a corporate membership scheme that will provide greater support to these inspirational community initiatives who work so hard to improve our beautiful rivers, whilst seeing the relationship between industry and Sheffield’s rivers come full circle.

If you are a community group or business interested in joining the Riverlution and finding out more about Corporate Responsibility Days, training opportunities and our new corporate membership scheme - please contact us at riverlution@the-rsc.co.uk