WHAT IS THE ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINT OF THE TRAIL?

We questioned 738 trail runners about the environmental aspects of their practice 📋!

The challenge was to finally put some figures on this subject, to take a picture of the current situation and to identify what the real levers of action are to reduce the environmental footprint of the trail 🍁

At the same time, we wanted to know if our young impact brand was really impactful, if we were working on the right subjects 🎯...

A survey of 738 trail runners

To do this, we surveyed our community and obtained 738 responses, a majority from men (64%) and regular exercisers (89% of them run more than 2000km flat per year).

3/4 of them feel strongly concerned about their environmental footprint, and 2% don't care.

In our survey, we tried to address 3 themes:

1. Transportation to training locations
2. races and events
3. Equipment

Here, I present the results of the first part.

4 to 5 trips per month in high season

As might be expected, our study reveals that trail runners take their car a little more than once a week to get to their trail spot, and to cover an average distance of 30km round trip.

But there is a big disparity between practitioners, some of them taking the car up to 6 times a week to travel 25km return...

22kg CO2eq every 100km

For those who are not yet familiar with this unit of measurement, CO2eq allows you to compare on the same scale the warming power of different greenhouse gases.

Although we talk a lot about CO2, there are in reality many other greenhouse gases emitted by human activity: methane CH4, nitrous oxide N2O, ozone O3, fluorinated gases, etc.

When we commonly talk about CO2eq emissions, we actually imply that we have taken into account the emissions of all the greenhouse gases produced by this activity.

Thus, for a car, ADEME estimates emissions on average at 22kg of CO2eq (use and construction) every 100km traveled. In practice this will of course depend on the type of car you use, your driving, the route, etc.

But hey, to simplify the reasoning, it is this figure that serves as my reference.

The impact of car journeys on the carbon footprint of the trail runner

So, on average, a trail runner will emit 288kg of CO2eq per year. The record in our database is 1.8t of CO2eq with 15 journeys per month averaging 70km return.

To estimate this, note that we took care to ask our respondents what the difference in practice was between high and low season.

2t CO2eq objective

This figure should be put into perspective given that the carbon capital making it possible to achieve the COP21 objectives of limiting global warming to 1.5°C is 2.1t of CO2eq per year, per inhabitant.

For our most experienced trail runners, on average, 25% of their carbon capital is consumed in these trips.

Carpooling: a very effective lever for reducing the carbon footprint!

Only 1 in 2 trail runners share their journey with at least one person. When we know that this is enough to divide this carbon footprint by 2, 3 or even 4 (when the car is full), it is clearly something that we do not prioritize enough! In our study, less than 5% of trail runners regularly fill up their car to go to a trail spot.

30km round trip to go for a 3 hour run… can we do them by bike?

It should still be mentioned that a little less than 20% of our respondents never take the car to go to their training spot and prefer an alternative mode of transport, such as cycling.

And it is really on this subject that we would ultimately like to open up reflection. 15km by bike is ultimately not much. And cycling 30-40 minutes to get to your training spot doesn't seem like a completely crazy idea.

And beyond the very positive impact on your carbon footprint, it's obviously a very good way to warm up, increase the volume without getting hurt, save money and perhaps also invent a new discipline of adventure and exploration: bike & trail!

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For further :

https://www.wisetrailrunning.com/blogs/le-blog/pourquoi-une-tenue-eco-responsable