“Emissions from passenger transport are the main source of CO2 from outdoor sports. To tackle this, Protect Our Winters (POW) Europe hosts a European Mobility Week“
Now, I’m a tad late to the party. In fact, I’m out before it started
Protect Our Winters Europe Mobility Week launched on my birthday, however, my girlfriend tested positive for Covid on Sunday and therefore, I’m not moving anywhere. Sticking to the 4 walls of the house, rather than moving between office, running group, responding to emergency calls and doing general things – you know, the mundane day to day tasks that require legs or wheels to be achieved.
The car is still the most popular mode of transport to access outdoor areas for sports and recreation. About 70% of emissions from outdoor recreation are related to transport. For this reason, POW Europe is launching a European wide POW Mobility Week (March 28 – April 3), engaging the outdoor community in finding creative and impactful ways to reduce its transport emissions. This week is focusing on being fun and raising awareness and will be followed-up by a political campaign later this year.
During POW Mobility Week businesses and individuals are encouraged to reduce their transport emissions to a minimum. Individual outdoor sport lovers are encouraged to move sustainably throughout the entire week, tracking their movements through an app from our partners Active Giving and sharing their sustainable travel stories (#POWMobilityWeek) on social media. Throughout the week there will be film screenings from POWs athlete ambassadors, showing sustainable travel adventure movies.
There will also be daily prizes including travel bags, ski tickets, snowboards, a POW merch and even an e-bike to encourage the outdoor community to get moving sustainably. While the sign-up process for brands to take part is still open, companies that already confirmed their participation are Burton, Nidecker, Picture Organic Clothing, Deuter, Specialized and Icebug, as well as Ruka and Pyhä ski resorts. These brands are engaging their employees and customers in creative ways, by running educational workshops on transport, showcasing different sustainable transport options, running employee competitions on the most sustainable travel to the office during the week, introducing bike support schemes, and community breakfasts for employees who come by bike. Many brands are also encouraging their athletes to take part and share their own stories. At the end of the week both outdoor sports lovers and businesses will be able to make more informed decisions on their mobility behaviour and better understand our transport emissions footprint.
“At POW we live by the belief that taking action for the climate should also be fun. Therefore we are launching POW Mobility Week, one week of action to tackle the biggest contribution of outdoor sports activities to climate change: transportation.” says Sören Ronge, POW Europe coordinator.
“Changing our transport behaviour on an individual level from plane to train or from car to bike can significantly help to reduce emissions. By encouraging people and companies to take part, tracking our travels and giving away some prizes we connect something good for the planet with something fun, while educating our community on this pressing issue.”
POW Mobility week is part of a wider mobility concept at POW Europe. Earlier this year we launched a Sustainable Travel Hub, a website to raise awareness, provide solutions and push for the necessary policy changes. The hub is continuously evolving and will grow through-out the year, providing information on easily accessible outdoor destinations, a carbon calculator and concrete information on how to travel more sustainably. Later this year we will complement this work with a political campaign to connect these individual level actions to systemic impact calling for the necessary policies and regulations required to make sustainable transportation the new normal.
Under the slogan “Reframe your journey” POW Europe is showing that taking the train or riding the bike to get to the trail can be fun and that the journey is actually part of the adventure. POW Europe will unite outdoor resorts, transport operators and the wider outdoor community to reduce their transport-related carbon footprint and reflect on their travel behaviour.
Head to https://protectourwinters.eu/ to find out how you can take action and get aboard. Slow down and enjoy the ride.
If you’re inspired to join in and make travel more than simply getting from A to B by the most efficient or fastest method and embrace other methods, see new parts of the city, town or area you live in, or simply shake up one day, let me know and make sure you follow Protect Our Winters Europe, as there are prizes to be won for sharing your adventure – #POWMobilityWeek
This is not a paid or sponsored post
James Mackeddie 
This is really great to read this, James. I totally feel sports and transportation to get to the events needs to be more sustainable.
I know Europe is way ahead of Canada in public transportation. I have an ultrarunner friend from Switzerland who doesn’t own a car and she will take the train to all these ultra races. The race starts and finishes right at the train station. And the train ticket is included in the registration.
This is so unheard of in Canada. It is not uncommon to drive 200-300 kilometers for a race. I drove 200 kilometers to an ultra race 7 years ago. I felt so guilty. As an advocate in combating climate change, I just cannot do that again.
I have 11,000 followers on Twitter, and I put out a tweet along the line if there is any ultraraces within 5 kilometers of a active train station anywhere in North America to let me know. No one knew of any. Which is really sad.
The POW Mobility Week is a great initiative. Bringing awareness, providing information hopefully will bring policy changes. For our future of our planet we as a society really need to get off of car dependency into more sustainable forms of transportation. Both in sports and every other part of our lives.
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Hey Carl, thanks for taking the time to give such a detailed insight of things in Canada and North America.
I’m over in the UK and our public transportation is also behind continental Europe in many ways.
There are an increasing number of races that offer pick ups from stations, but most are still a few km from a station and not practical for any of our more mountainous races, as the infrastructure in many cases doesn’t exist or its an ultra challenge in itself, both physically, mentally and financially to do it by train or bus. Therefore, the car is still very well used for training and racing in the UK.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, public transport need to be the easy and affordable option and it ripples out to all aspects of life
Once again, thanks for reaching out, be happy to talk some time.
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You are very welcome, James. It is really neat to connect with someone else who really feels this is an area that needs big improvements. I am fortunate to have done a couple of ultras where I travelled by train. The difference was I had a runner friend pick me at the other end and then drive me to the race. In both cases the train station was around 20k from the race start. Otherwise they would never have happened. 😀
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