Whether we're trail riding, on a gravel adventure, or just a jaunt to the local woods, litter-strewn trails and car parks spoil the high we get from riding in natural spots. But not only is this rubbish a buzz-kill as far as we're concerned, it can be a literal-kill for wildlife as well as polluting the environment as objects break into ever smaller pieces.
Fortunately, Trash Free Trails are here to help us keep our pristine places, erm, pristine. Its mission is to reduce the amount of litter blighting our wild places by 75 percent by 2025 and its annual Spring Trail Clean campaign, which is currently in full swing, is a big part of how rash Free Trails looking to do that.
The ‘One Bag Challenge’ asks us all to fill a bag with trash found on the trails as often as we can. Once you've gathered your bag of trail junk, share a photo of your haul with Trash Free Trails via social media and they will add it to the ‘Bagometer’ on its website which shows the number of trash bags collected so far.
Whatever the time of year, rather than trash/litter/rubbish (or as Trash Free Trails prefer to call it, ‘single-use pollution’) being someone else’s problem, Trash Free Trails encourage us all to ‘do it ourselves’. The Do It Ourselves Toolkit gives tips and guidance on removing litter as an individual, with a bunch of mates, and doing a complete area clean-up as a larger organized group. It also has online facilities for reporting the amount and nature of the rubbish collected, or even just entering the number of pieces of trash you count as you ride a particular route.
You can find much more information on how to get involved and the various campaigns that Trash Free Trails run throughout the year over at www.trashfreetrails.org.
