06.06.12:Roseland Online editor, Mark David Hatwood, has been nominated for a prestigious global award, the Katerva Awards, for his environmental pursuits.

Mark, who is managing director of the CoBRA Scheme (Community Battery/Bulb Recycling Alliance), started this national battery and bulb recycling scheme in 2008 from his village of Portscatho on the Roseland Peninsula.

The scheme has won 6 national awards and has helped recycle over 50 tonnes of batteries in Cornwall alone over the past four years and now has been nominated for this global award, considered to be the ‘Nobel’ of sustainability – recognising the best in sustainability on the planet – and just 100 people each year (10 in each of 10 categories) are nominated throughout the world.

Mark told Roseland Online, “I received an email last week out of the blue telling me I’d been nominated and it blew me away. Not only that they found me down here in sunny Cornwall, but that the in-house research team themselves had put me forward and I’m the only one in the UK at present who has been nominated.”

Mark recently put CoBRA to one side whilst opening his new ‘day job’, The Harbour Gallery in Portscatho, but there is a deal in the wings for 11,800 sub post offices to get on board.

Mark continued, “CoBRA has hundreds of volunteers signed up throughout the UK and our pending deal with the NFSP (National Federation of Sub PostOffices) could increase that dramatically, but funding and a national retail partner have been hard to come by in these difficult times, so I’ve had to diversify a little. This global nomination, however, will help hugely when I resume with CoBRA after the summer.”

The Katerva Award council will now pick 5 from each category to be the finalists in their field and these 5 will be publicised worldwide in papers like the Observer. Last year’s 10 category awards were given out in the Lincoln Centre in New York and then an overall winner was chosen from these winners and this award was presented in Tokyo last year.