Liverpool Chamber staff took part in a special ’school sports day’ on Old Hall Street today to help celebrate Liverpool’s 800th Birthday.

In a series of classic events, like the egg and spoon race, sack race and space hopper, er, race, Team Chamber took on teams from neighbouring businesses and organisations.

Despite a quite horrendous level of cheating being displayed by some teams (mentioning no names, but Liverpool Vision and the Combined Armed Forces Team should be ashamed of themselves), the Chamber’s brave athletes scored a valiant joint second overall. And that was with hardly any cheating at all. Well, maybe just a bit…

All participants were awarded a special medal for taking part. The Chamber’s very own Paul also received some nasty scraped knuckles, a result of a desperate dive and roll to beat the an army to the finish line.

See pictures of the games and other events on the Chamber Flickr page.

Other events took place around the city, including pageants and parades and tonight will see a spectacular fireworks display at the Pier Head. There was even a medieval theme in Exchange Flags, with stilt walkers (very big in the 13th century, apparently), and real live birds of prey on display. Surprisingly, no pigeons were anywhere to be seen.

More details on the day’s events can be found on the Liverpool 08 website.

More pictures from the day can be seen on the Prazzi website.

Switched off to environmental issues? Doing your bit with cutting waste but missing where the next opportunity lies? Or perhaps you are totally committed to environmental action in your business?

If any of those characters sound familiar, it’s not surprising. The Envirowise programme suggests that the environmental behaviour of employees is routed in four different ‘eco characters’. And the key to a more profitable and sustainable business is making the best of these characters, which can be summarised as:

• Eco-sceptics are non-committed individuals who perhaps have doubts over the motive to act on environmental issues
• Eco-ignorers undertake the obvious mainstream activities, but are blinkered to the opportunities to take firmer environmental action
• Eco-implementers are typically committed implementers of resource efficient activity, going beyond the most obvious actions
• Eco-innovators are pioneers that look to seize the opportunity to improve competitiveness through completing environmental activities

Nick Ward, Envirowise Regional Manager for the North West, commented: “In every company, employees will have different attitudes when it comes to environmental and sustainability issues.

“We hope that North West’s business managers will see that recognising the attitudes of their staff is crucial in encouraging positive behaviour change on environmental matters. We’re not trying to say that a company of eco-innovators is best - rather managers should look to take the best from each employee in order to form an effective environmental team.”

Gary Pheiffer, Chartered Occupational Psychologist and Senior Lecturer at London Metropolitan University, added: “The definition of these eco-characters suggests that to bring about organisational change we cannot take a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

“Crucially, businesses must tailor their activities to reflect the needs and potential of different individuals. For example, awareness-raising activities or events may be useful for ‘unfreezing’ the eco-sceptics, while the eco-innovators could be called on to help enter their organisation for awards linked to sustainable action - which in turn could send out a strong message to their competitors.”

Envirowise can offer free, tailored advice to any company wanting guidance on becoming more sustainable - via a free advice line (0800 585 794), or via www.envirowise.gov.uk.