An inspirational care worker is pleading with the people of Plymouth to take climate change seriously after storms and heatwaves battered the UK in the last few weeks.

Emily Campbell from Whitleigh says she wants to spread the word about how people can transform Plymouth into a greener city.

The 20-year-old says that the recent heatwave which saw temperatures soar to 30 degrees celcius in some parts of the country, and the amber weather warning for the South West has made her speak out about the issue.

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She said: "I've always been interested in this and now I finally have the confidence to go and do something about it.

"Especially with all this hot weather we've had it's made me push it, because this isn't normal. To have 30 degree weather and then really bad storms and flooding.

"All these catastrophes happening in the world is as a result of our actions and we need to take a stand and do some good."

Emily says she feels there isn't much awareness of climate change in Plymouth, and wants to make a change.

She said: "I don't think there's anything major in Plymouth that happens about climate change, and I want to change that. I want to get people to understand how serious this issue is, and how we can all make a change and make a really positive impact.

"Ask yourself this question: what would you like the future to be for your kids? Would you like a nice, safe environment where there's water and plenty of food? There's going to be more droughts, shortages of everything. There's so much that needs to be said and it's so hard to get everyone to hard."

"I just don't think people take much interest, and I don't think people have much education on climate change. If we put the message out to say, please act now, if we all come together we can do this.

"We can make Plymouth green. It's just little steps like reducing food intake, more vegetables rather than meat, change a lightbulb to be energy saving, just little things everyone can do in their daily life."

"You could walk to work rather than drive, there's loads that we can do."

On Saturday August 7 Emily will be taking to the streets of Plymouth to make her voice heard, and will be handing out flyers in the city centre.

The inspiring woman said: "I want to spread the word out, we need to act now. Our world isn't sustainable anymore, we need to give back to it.

"It's given us so much but we've done nothing for it.

"I've been thinking about setting up a public group about climate change where we can make changes. I've got so much running through my head at once!"

Let us know if you'll be taking steps to lower your carbon footprint in the comments below.


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