Trash Free Trails UK

Trash Free Trails UK exists to protect the trails we love and the wild places they take us. 

The MISSION of Trash Free Trails is to re-connect people with nature through purposeful adventure and create a sustained reduction in single-use pollution on UK trails and wild places by 2030.

Why is it important?

In the words of Trash Free Trails, "As outdoor sportspeople, we live and breathe the very environments that we seek to protect. We depend on these places for our mental health and wellbeing, they are our habitats, and we can no longer ignore what we see in every city park or mountain summit we explore. Like our oceans and streets, our trails and wild places are becoming choked by plastic pollution. At the same time, we are witnessing the social and emotional impacts of 'environmental disconnection,' habitat loss and even 'eco-grief' on the mental health and wellbeing of individuals and communities."

Trash Free Trails UK is a small organization with the aim of creating an enormous positive impact in the environment. They are a strong and empowered grassroots community built and sustained on trust. Also key is the collaborations they build with other organizations who share the same passion for wild places and wish to protect them as much as they do. TFT is grateful for long-term partners with whom they have built progressive relationships built upon shared values, mutually supportive expectations and a commitment to creating long-term sustainable impact. 

How do they do it?

Trash Free Trails response to the environmental and social issues facing us today is quite simple. They want to bring thousands of people together to rid our habitats of plastic pollution, gather and act upon evidence of the damage that it's doing, and, perhaps most importantly, find new ways to explore and enjoy our world. They will break things down into 'bite-size' chunks of achievable, impactful actions and purposeful adventures - otherwise known as Trail Cleans! DIO (Do It Ourselves) Toolkit, A-TEAM, or HQ led, these are TFT's bread and butter. Each activity is designed to act as a gateway to wider environmental awareness, action and adventure, whose individual impact rolls effortlessly together with the actions of fellow riders, runners and roamers and the global environmental movement as a whole. They aim to connect people across the globe to the places they love through the simple act of single-use-pollution cleanup. 

Trash Free Trails also encourages you to become a Purposeful Adventurer. Learn all about how you can take the necessary steps to enhance your journey for yourself and others and always #LeaveAPositiveTrace.

How you can #TravelKindly: 

• Choose TRASH FREE TRAILS UK as your local charity when booking your hotel through Kind Traveler. 
• TFT  believes that people already have everything they need in their heads, hands and hearts to protect and enhance their trails and wild places. So they created the Do It Ourselves (DIO) Toolkit to provide people with the inspiration, information and tools to do things in their own way, in their own voice. Learn more about this 9-step process here.
• Join a Citizen Science Expedition – People will be able to join a series of adventure science expeditions and talks, aimed at field testing new methodologies to establish the prevalence, composition and impacts of single-use pollution on recreational trails through their State of Our Trails Report.
• Wherever you are, remember that World Clean-Up Day is September 19th – The Trash Free Trails community joins in with this global movement. The same goes for Earth Day Trash Mobs on April 22nd. Trail communities across the globe will be pitching in. 
• Download the 2023 Route Map. Each January, they publish a beautifully designed map of the year ahead, including what they have planned, when they're doing it and how you can join in.
• The 35-strong team of regional volunteer ambassadors, known as the A-TEAM, are always super welcoming of and grateful for new additions to their community.
• Join the #TrashMob and Report your Trail Clean