We’re pledging 1% for the planet this Black Friday

We believe there’s nothing quite like the freedom of a run and that to keep us running in the places we love, it’s up to all of us to do our bit to protect the planet. As part of our overall sustainability mission, we want to help protect the outdoor spaces we love by supporting environmental projects and initiatives that have a positive impact on our planet. That’s why we’ll be giving 1% of all our sales this Black Friday to The Climate Project, to help protect important moorland landscapes which play a vital role for biodiversity and make a huge contribution in the fight against climate change. 

You can find full details on exactly how our 1% donation works here.

The Climate Project is a campaign led by our partners at the British Mountaineering Council (BMC) to support the work of Moors for the Future, who are making a real difference to protect the moorland landscapes that you love. 

Blanket bogs in moorland areas help tackle climate change because they absorb carbon from the atmosphere and store it as peat. In the Peak District alone, 20 million tonnes of carbon are stored in what are effectively carbon sinks. By storing this carbon in the ground, it doesn’t contribute toward the warming effects that excess atmospheric carbon is having on rising global temperatures. 

How do our wild moorlands do this? It’s all because of an amazing plant called sphagnum. When growing healthily, this little plant powerhouse can take as much carbon out of the atmosphere as a tropical rainforest and when existing healthily, our peat bogs provide the largest natural terrestrial carbon store in the world. However, allowing these blanket bogs to deteriorate into poor condition can mean they start to release more carbon than they take in. Without healthy plant cover, huge amounts of all that previously stored carbon is emitted back into the atmosphere, exacerbating the problem. That’s why it’s so important that we protect them.

By revegetating areas of damaged blanket bog, long term the project aims to:

• halt the erosion of peat from the moors

• reduce the loss of carbon

• increase the amount of carbon absorption

• turn the damaged carbon sources back into carbon sinks

• reduce wildfire and flooding risk

• protect endangered wildlife

If you think that layers of peatlands can contain more than twice the amount of carbon as forests, it’s easy to understand why we think this work is so important. Over time, if we can improve the condition of our peat bogs and allow sphagnum mosses to establish, our moorlands will once again start taking carbon in and better withstand the shocks and stresses they face from our current changing climate. That’s why we are proud to support this project because it directly provides an effective long-term tool in the fight towards lowering carbon emissions and tackling climate change. 

In the UK, peat moorlands cover 15% of our land, but many of these moorlands are degraded, having been dug up, drained or destroyed, with the Peak District moorland landscape classed as one of the most degraded in Europe. Moors for the Future was founded in 2003 to tackle this problem, and so far, they’ve helped regenerate nearly 8,000 acres of peat moors in the Peak District and South Pennines.

Each square metre of sphagnum they plant costs £25, so this Black Friday, we’ve pledged 1% of our sales to help revegetate our moorlands and do our bit to take on one of our planet’s most urgent environmental challenges.

You can sign up as a Sphagnum Supporter or if you want to donate directly to The Climate Project, you can make a donation here.