On 21 October 2011, Jean-Marc Ayrault, former mayor of Nantes, accepted the Nantes European Green Capital 2013 Award from the European Commission’s panel of judges in Stockholm. Receiving this prestigious award was a testament to the hard work of the city and its citizens in creating a sustainable urban environment. Since then a great deal has happened to mark Nantes’ year as European Green Capital. We have decided to showcase some of the highlights  to celebrate the end of Nantes’ year.

• Nantes did a fantastic job of showcasing how culture, the arts and the environment can work together to spark wider citizen interest and involvement in sustainability issues. Their fantastic ‘flying greenhouse’ travelling exhibition, the ‘Aéroflorale’, was the emblem of the Nantes European Green Capital and captivated people’s imagination in cities across Europe.

• The 14^th June 2013 saw Nantes host the European Green Capital 2015 Award Ceremony on Île de Nantes, an island located in the centre of the city, surrounded by two branches of the Loire River.  The next day the ‘Green Island Itinerary’, a series of imaginative urban installations created by the Île de Nantes urban regeneration project, was opened to residents and visitors to the island.

• In September Nantes was the first European city to host the ECOCITY World Summit on Sustainable Cities. The Summit brought together experts from across the world to discuss the actions cities and citizens can take to create a sustainable urban environment for future generations.

Nantes also hosted the 3rd world meeting of the signatory cities to the ‘Mexico City Pact’. The pact, a global cities covenant on climate, has established voluntary commitments to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to encourage cities to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

• Nantes played host to a giant public meal for 5,000 people, addressing the issue of food waste by using only food products that would otherwise have been discarded.

The Giant Meal was held at the Nefs on l’île de Nantes, from 18.00 to 22.00. © Christiane Blanchard

We would like to congratulate Nantes on its very successful year as European Green Capital and wish them the best of luck with their future environmental endeavours.

The European Green Capital is a celebration of cities that are rising to the challenge of successfully combining respect for the environment, excellent quality of life, and economic growth. As Nantes has shown, winners are committed to improving environmental performance, but winning is not an end in itself.  The European Green Capital Award is not just a trophy, it is about valuable experiences, opportunities to evolve and incentives to do more and better.

– See more at: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/looking-back-on-nantes-year/index.html#sthash.a9zMrlhk.dpuf