Image by Joby Newson. Words by Rach Coleman
We were sat in a meeting last week, crunching the final numbers on the State of Our Trails Report 2024, and I was slightly questioning my life choices. Numbers were flitting between the team and I was confused, to say the least. That slightly cynical voice inside my head was going 'this is why you shouldn't have changed the Report last minute'.
It wasn't so last minute, but we did change direction partway through the process. This truly wasn't the Report we thought we'd write. But as I sit here the morning of its release typing out this blog post, I'm so glad we did.
Today we release this year's edition of the State of Our Trails Report. It's about drinks containers. It's about the UK's Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), a vital policy we need to achieve a Trash Free Future, but one that seems even now, far off in the distance.
It's also about the power of connecting what we see out on our trails with what gets spoken about in the big House on the River Thames. I get out for the same reason so many of us do - to get away, to tap out. But to find a piece of single-use pollution is to be reminded that we live in a time where we can't completely tap out, but we can tap into how that seemingly insignificant item connects to a larger system, a larger whole.
I'm proud to say that thanks to over 3,600 individuals, who went out to get away and began removing single-use pollution, we've been able to paint the most detailed picture yet of the impacts of drinks containers on recreational trails, and the animals that call them home. Without them, we wouldn't know that 33% of what's out there is eligible for a DRS - that glass bottles have a significant impact, including risking forest fires. We wouldn't have found this mouse in a bottle on Yr Wyddfa in April - this image taken by Joby which has captured our attention for months. Which was the reason why 2 weeks in, and four weeks out, we changed the State of Our Trails Report to focus on their story.
This isn't the Report we thought we'd write - I am so proud it is. You can read it here.
Special thank you to the SoOT 2024 Report team - Chris Hunt, Helen Wilson, Dom Ferris and Josh Hothersall. Thank you to the team at Fusion Media for championing our research.
The biggest thank you to PJ Serrano, our beloved Research Officer who took the next step in her career this week. We have been so lucky to have her, and she'll be sorely missed from TFT HQ.
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