We have a responsibility as a business
Attitudes to sustainability are changing. Three-quarters of the public now believe we are facing a climate emergency. 88% of consumers want brands to help them make a difference. With this in mind, we have an increasing responsibility as a business to make the right decisions on behalf of our customers. This will enable us to make our events more sustainable. Over the past 3 years we have been working hard to reduce our carbon footprint and provide a more sustainable series of events. These have ranged from simple visible changes, such as removing plastic cups from water stations to more complex logistical changes on how we transport our equipment and crew to reduce our vehicle emissions. All changes we make will be designed to reduce our impact on the environment, whilst retaining the great experience of taking part in the Threshold Trail Series.
We have identified that a vegetarian menu will have the greatest impact
In 2019 we partnered with A Greener Festival to analyse the carbon footprint on the Threshold Trail Series. We learned that the largest contributors to emissions that we have direct control of comes from the food we serve at our basecamp and pit stops. For example, meat comprises 75% of these emissions despite only accounting for a fifth of what’s been served. Even endeavoring to go local, only addresses a small part of the challenge, since transport typically amounts to just 1% of meat’s carbon footprint. We’ve done the maths and concluded that by removing meat from the menu and our collective lives for the brief duration of an event we can reduce our emissions by nearly 65 tonnes in 2022!
We know this will be a change for people, but in the past, it has been embraced
We know this will be a change for many, but we also know how supportive and adaptive our community has been to these initiatives in the past. In 2016 we removed all single-use plastics from our ultra-marathons. Asking our participants to carry their own bottle and cutlery 100km as they tackled the arduous topography of the Ridgeway or the Cotswolds, was not something we took lightly. The positivity from our customers was overwhelming, as it was once again when we published our sustainability framework in 2020, with a vow to build back greener.
We have worked with nutritionists and will have meat options as an extra cost
Nutrition is key to getting you across that finish line this summer and we’ll be working with a nutritional expert Tom Hollis to design menus that are both delicious and meet your nutritional and calorific requirements. For anyone that feels that they can’t survive for a weekend on vegetarian fare alone, we’ll still have a vendor at basecamp providing meat-based food. However, everything we provide and that is included in the ticket price, will be vegetarian. Dairy will remain on the menus, you’ll still find cheese, milk, and eggs, but we won’t be increasing these items to replace the meat that we’ve taken away. This is about reducing our collective carbon footprint so it would be counterproductive to double down on cheddar.
We believe it is the right thing to do, part of our journey
We’re not preaching about dietary choices. We are a mixed bunch here at Threshold and many of us enjoy a burger as much as the next person. But we do believe the experts when they say that the planet will be better off if we eat a little bit less. This won’t suit everyone, but it is the right thing to do and represents the next chapter in our journey of being a responsible events business.
