Climate change is impacting on our ability to be active, as rising temperatures, more intense storms, flooding and heatwaves are affecting how, when and where we participate.
Everyone can help to reduce these impacts by supporting their clubs and community organisations to become more environmentally sustainable.
Buddle caught up with Solent Pirates Youth Cycling Club to see what they’re doing to make their club and events more environmentally sustainable.
Solent Pirates are a youth cycling club located between Chichester and Portsmouth on the south coast. They provide opportunities for over 130 children and young people, aged 6-16, to participate in road and track cycling, mountain biking and cyclo-cross racing.
The club are run by a dedicated set of volunteers and have a clear intention to operate in a more environmentally friendly way. They know the impact they can have and believe that every organisation and individual can do more by taking small steps to do things differently.
Over the last few years, the club have made some changes to the way they do things, to help them become more environmentally sustainable and reduce the costs for their members.
Knowing that producing new kit uses a lot of energy and precious resources, the club have never changed the design of their kit. This means that members don’t need to purchase a new kit every year, which saves them money too.
The club also operate a second-hand kit market. Used kit is recycled and sold at reduced prices or given to members and they’ve purchased second-hand bikes, which are loaned to members.
The club have focused on purchasing and loaning out smaller bikes, which are used for less time as riders outgrow them, or specialised bikes such as track bikes, to help reduce the need to buy new bikes.
These actions benefit both the environment by promoting a circular economy, and their members by ensuring their activities are as accessible as possible by reducing the costs of kit and equipment.
Hosting a round of the Cyclo-Cross National Trophy Series for the first time was the perfect opportunity for the club to make changes to the way they run their events, to ensure they were more environmentally sustainable.
The changes they made included:
Combining events
When hosting the national series, the club recognised the opportunity to combine the event with the Inter-regional Youth Championships they had also offered to host. This attracted more people and significantly reduced travel emissions.
Combined, the events attracted over 600 participants from across the UK and minimised the need for people to travel to separate events at different times.
Jet washers
These are vital in cyclo-cross racing competitions as competitors use multiple bikes during a race, which need to be washed between use. Competitors usually bring their own petrol-fuelled washers to each event.
To help reduce travel weight for competitors, and the need use large amounts of water and petrol, the club installed 12 electric jet washers which ran off a single generator. This helped to reduce both water use and fuel consumption by up to 80%.
British Cycling (their national governing body) supported this initiative by contributing to the costs of purchasing and installing the washers. To encourage more people to use the washers, the club promoted their availability and use within their pre-event information.
Tree planting
The club have planted 550 trees at the race venue, Queen Elizabeth Country Park. The trees were donated by Hampshire County Council through their tree planting scheme.
The work for Solent Pirates doesn’t stop here; they know more can be done. Current plans to help them become as environmentally sustainable as possible include:
Solent Pirates’ top tips for other groups who want to be more environmentally sustainable are: