ENVIRONMENT
CHANGING BEHAVIOURS CONFERENCE
How can we care better for the places we love?
The BMC access conference, held last November, looked at how we can influence positive behaviour in the outdoors in order to continue to care for the places we love. There were a number of presentations from engaging speakers focussing on a range of issues from wild fires to parking in the great outdoors.
BMC HILLS 2 OCEANS Share your rubbish stories
Since the start of 2019, the BMC’s Hills 2 Oceans (H2O) has been calling on members and the wider public to get involved in a litter pick to help remove as much rubbish and plastic from our hills, mountains and crags as possible so it doesn’t end up in our oceans. We would love to hear from anyone organising a litter pick on our H2O Facebook Group page (see link below). In particular, where you go, how much rubbish you remove and if you find anything of interest. The Facebook page is now full of interesting stories, which are a great record of the amount of waste we are removing from our mountains, crags and hills, from nappies to a
ghetto blaster. We would love even more volunteers to take part in clean-up events. If you want to organise your own clean up event, the BMC can help by providing handheld litter pickers (that can be recycled once they are no longer in use) and re-useable, biodegradable bin bags. Details of how to obtain these, along with a resource pack to help you plan a successful event, can be found via the Facebook group.
The BMC pledge: The BMC have eliminated all single-use plastic from the office. Our presence at festivals and events is now also completely plastic free.
The GB Climbing Development Squad take part in a litter pick. Laura Cutress.
In particular, the conference highlighted the continuing problems around litter and poo, disposable barbecues, dogs, transport and a general disrespect for our natural environment. All of those presenting drew on the need for more education and a change in tactic in how we try to tackle changing behaviour. It was agreed that inspiration, dialogue, compromise and trust are all required along with public pressure and awareness.
Similarly, there was general agreement that more
Did you know
• Every day, eight million pieces of plastic pollution find their way into our oceans
• Approximately 6.3bn tonnes of plastic waste is generated in the UK each year and out of this around 9% has been recycled, 12% incinerated and 79% is in landfills or in the natural environment
• Approximately 480bn bottles were sold globally in 2016 (approximately one million bottles per minute) and only 7% of these were recycled
• A tissue takes around six weeks to break down, a cigarette butt takes up to 10 years and an aluminium can takes about 200 years
JOIN:
The H2O Facebook Group:
www.facebook.com/groups/Hills2Oceans
volunteering opportunities would be beneficial to help get more people involved and spread the understanding of the impacts we are having. More pressure on central government around issues such as funding for path work and the banning of BBQs is also needed. How quickly this change is needed was also raised – ‘winning slowly is the same as losing outright…’
READ
PDF versions of the presentations are available here:
www.thebmc.co.uk/access- conference-changing
20 | CLIMB. WALK. JOIN.
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