Keith Melton has been an environmentalist since the early 1970s, serving as both the founding chair of the Liberal Ecology Group and the Green Liberal Democrats after the Liberal Party and SDP merger in 1988. After a few years away from politics after founding the Institute for Sustainable Development in Business, he rejoined the LibDems and again took up the chair of Green LibDems in 2020.

In May 2023 Keith was elected as Liberal Democrat Councillor for Trent Ward in Newark & Sherwood District Council where is he portfolio holder for Climate Change and deputy leader for the LibDem Group on the Council. Keith's key pledges are:

• We need to plant many more trees to greatly increase woodland cover and help to sequester more carbon emissions
• Recognising the relatively lowly position of Newark and Sherwood recycling rate compared with other district councils we will push for more and better recycling in the District
• We are committed to investing in renewable energy, reducing carbon emissions and promoting green infrastructure, creating a cleaner and healthier local community
• Liberal Democrats are calling for  an Environmental Impact Assessment for all the local energy creation and battery storage projects proposed locally – Staythorpe, Averham and Kelham
• I pledged to work across Party lines to achieve the best results possible for the District
• I pledged to work towards cleaning up the River Trent

It has recently been announced that Severn Trent Water wants to give money away to its shareholders AND it wants the Ofwat regulator to allow water bills to go up by 35% in the next seven years. They should, instead, be mending their leaky pipes and investing in sewage treatment to stop discharges of raw sewage. The River Trent is the seventh most polluted river in the country!