inov-8 ditches Black Friday to protect Lake District peatlands
You can’t click the internet at the moment without ads for Black Friday discounts. But one running brand has chosen to forego the traditional annual sales extravaganza and instead contribute towards the Green Friday campaign in an effort to fight climate change.
Lake District-based inov-8, whose headquarters are in Staveley, Cumbria, knows all about the importance of the local bog-saturated peatlands. These waterlogged areas are not just a fell runner’s nightmare due to their foot-sucking abilities – it turns out they’re highly significant in terms of trapping harmful carbon in the soil. In fact, despite peatlands covering just 3% of the planet, their soil stores twice as much CO2 as the world’s forests.
Senior development officer for Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Michelle Waller, said: ‘Healthy peatlands full of bogs are the UK’s largest carbon store – they lock away 28.5 million tonnes of CO2 in the Lake District alone.’
In an effort to protect these peatland bogs, inov-8 has pledged to donate 5% of all sales to the Cumbria Wildlife Trust until 29 November. The money the trust receives from inov-8 will go towards helping to maintain the area’s special peatlands. “These include the 350-hectare site at Foulshaw Moss Nature Reserve, which is about the size of 500 football pitches and locks away over 5,300 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year,” says Waller.
The For Peat’s Sake campaign will also involve a ‘mass plog’ litter pick run on 26 November, where several of the brand’s athletes will join runners across the world helping to clean up their local areas.
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