[170] Active(ish) for Earth – With Tash Acres from Earth Runs

A Sustainable Life with Jen Gale

Tash Acres is the founder of Earth Runs, an organistaion that rewards activity by planting trees!
As you will hear, Tash’s approach to running and physical activity is so similar to my approach to sustainability – anything is better than nothing, it all counts, celebrating the successes no matter how small, and so much more!
Now if you're sat there thinking "I’m not into running, this episode isn’t for me", don’t switch off! This episode is for everyone! Tash shared a couple of really startling stats during the episode – apparently inactivity is the 4^th biggest killer of people in the UK, and being active for just 10 minutes a day can reduce your risk of premature death by 10%.
Tash’s definition of ‘activity’ is super broad – anything that gets you moving, just for a bit. Anything that gets you up from the sofa, or your office chair, ideally outdoors, because of all the additional mental health benefits that that brings, but she’s not fussy – she talks about doing just 10 squats last week and how that was better than nothing.
Somewhat unsurprisingly I love Tash’s approach, and I love what she’s doing – there are virtual races and challenges you can get involved in, you can join me in the 1% Club, which plants a tree for every day you’re active (and active can be anything, you absolutely don’t need to be running if you don’t want to!), or you can find plantable medals for your school or community fun run.
Enjoy!

Tash Acres - founder of Earth Runs

GOOD NEWS!
In the new Good News section after the main interview, I share some of the good climate news happening (because there is some, I promise!). Here's this weeks pick:

• Deforestation rates in Brazil's Amazon have plummeted (The Progress Network)
• Community solar is set to surge in the UK (Positive News)
• Much closer to home, in The Sustainable(ish) Clubhouse we’ve had a fashion focus for this half-term, which is now coming to a close. As part of the theme, we’ve had a mending thread in the Facebook community where people have come and added to the tally with items that they’ve mended – we’re up to 151 items at the last count!
  Obviously this has saved all of these items from landfill, and saved the expense of having to buy new items to replace them, but I wanted to try and get a rough idea of the carbon savings, so I headed over to a new set of comparison calculators from Giki and used the ‘new clothes’ calculator – very roughly, mending these 150+ items have saved over 1 tonne of greenhouse gas emissions and 359,992 litres of water. That's the equivalent of driving nearly 4000 miles in a Ford Focus and enough water for 143 months of showers!
  

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LISTEN...

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USEFUL LINKS:

• Earth Runs
  - Website
  - Facebook
  - Twitter/X
  - Instagram
  - Newsletter
  - The 1% Club
  - Virtual Challenges
  - Earth Runs Medals
  - The Trees
• Tash Acres on Linked In
• [104] - How Just One Tree Can Make a Difference - podcast
  
• Carbon Literacy training
• The Sustainable(ish) Clubhouse

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What were your takeaways from this episode? Any lightbulb moments?
What are you going to go out and DO as a result of this episode?
What's the thing that YOU can do, no matter how small or imperfectly?
And can you get up and out of the house for just 10 minutes..?!
Do share in a comment below!

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