Bath Motor Club is proud to be advancing the cause of sustainability for motorsport, by become the first UK motor club to achieve the new Environmental Sustainability award from Motorsport UK. The popular Bath based club has established an environmental sustainability management system to control and reduce their environmental impacts.

The UK governing body Motorsport UK is following the FIA sustainability initiative by encouraging all levels of motorsport to implement an environmental sustainability system, driving action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Bath Motor Club is leading the way, by managing all its environmental aspects including offsetting all its vehicle CO2 emissions and heading for ‘net zero carbon’ ahead of the UK Government’s own targets.

A big step towards this is local tree planting and habitat creation, and Bath Motor Club is working in partnership with passionate local organisation Co-forest to buy and plant new permanent forestry, and Bath Motor Club members are volunteering to get down and dirty, and plant some of these trees themselves.

David Whittock, Bath Motor Club Chairman said: “The environment has been on every one’s mind for some time. We are all under pressure to make this world of ours a cleaner place and to do something positive to stop global warming increasing in the future.

“We believe we can make a difference without interrupting or changing the basics of our sport. With lockdown, it gave us time to think hard and fast about it, which led to us making a commitment to push forward and implement our environmental sustainability management system.

“We can only make small changes to begin with, but over time we can easily prove its worth overall.

Andrew Cross, Bath Motor Club’s Environmental Champion added: “After retiring from environmental work in the motor industry, and with a life-long love of motorsport, it was perfect to be given the opportunity to help my local Bath Motor Club to achieve sustainability accreditation through the MSUK and FIA methodology.

It was vital that we took a comprehensive look at all our environmental aspects, including waste, land protection, purchasing and noise, but it was very clear that our need to help reduce global warming had to be our first priority. By planting new native trees and creating a whole new habitat to go with it, we can offset all our carbon emissions to the extent that our direct activities in our popular club events can all become carbon neutral.

In partnership with Co-forest we are physically creating this new permanent forestry ourselves, which could not be more visible or more exciting!