Said to be one of the UK’s most popular motorsport events, The Mull Rally has announced its commitment to an environmental policy that seeks to offset 136 tons of carbon emissions this year, with further reductions planned.
Organizers have put in place a strategy to show a year-on-year improvement in the green credentials of the event, which is set to bring a multi-million-pound cash injection to the Hebridean island following the Covid-19 pandemic. Working in partnership with the island’s Future Forest Company, it has reached an agreement on carbon offset credits to ensure the rally’s environmental impact is controlled.
“This is just the beginning of our journey to ringfence – from an environmental perspective – the future of the event,” commented Andy Jardine, Mull Rally clerk of the course. “This year we will offset carbon generated by the use of fossil fuel consumption not just on the rally route but also getting to the rally. This means the organizers, the crews, their support crews and all the brilliant volunteers who help us out by marshaling and working as officials will travel to this stunning part of the world safe in the knowledge that their carbon dioxide emissions will be fully compensated.
“We talk a lot about the positive economic impact the rally has on the island – and that will be felt more keenly than ever when it returns after its pandemic-enforced absence in 2020 – but it’s vital that we compensate for the environmental impact as well. Every year the rally runs, we have a team of volunteers and officials who go around the route to check we’re leaving the highways and byways of Mull as we found them. Now we’re doing the same with the environment. And, crucially, we’re working locally to deliver on that policy,” concluded Jardine.
“Our focus at The Future Forest Company is to remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as possible, and this approach combines reforestation and peatland restoration with the nature-based carbon removal and storage techniques of biochar and enhanced weathering,” explained The Future Forest Company’s Chris Zair.
“Our partnership with The Mull Rally will help fund the removal of 136 tons of eCO2 through our biochar process, with this biochar added to the land as a soil additive at our reforestation site at the Glenaros Estate on Mull, helping to create healthier forests. Once the offsets are produced and certified in late 2021, they will be provided to the team at the Mull Rally to cover the footprint of event vehicles. We’re excited to be working with their team this year and to hear of their plans to expand their sustainability strategy year on year to reduce their environmental impact,” concluded Zair.
