Support road.cc

Like this site? Help us to make it better.

news

Bike Week Back for 2010 with new headline sponsor

Team Green Britain to use events to promote sustainable lifestyles

Bike Week, being held this year from 19-27 June, has announced that Team Green Britain, a movement founded by EDF Energy to promote sustainable lifestyles, has become its new headline sponsor ahead of this year’s event, which has the theme ‘Everyday cycling for everyone.’

According to its organisers, Team Green Britain Bike Week “will challenge people to rethink their everyday journeys and switch to cycling as the most convenient way to get around,” and claim that Team Green Britain’s 700,000-strong community “will not only help Bike Week reach more people than ever before, but the added number of events they bring could make this year’s Team Green Britain Bike Week the biggest yet.”

The sponsorship will also have an impact behind the scenes, with funding provided for 12 group mentoring workshops throughout Britain for new event organisers as well as those who have been involved before, a series of tailored Event Organiser Guides, and greater website functionality.

Philip Darnton, Chair of Cycling England, said: “This sponsorship from a high profile brand like EDF Energy’s Team Green Britain will help further mainstream cycling and recruit more people than ever during Bike Week. We hope the extra support for event organisers will inspire more events, helping people re-discover the benefits of a healthier, more convenient, greener lifestyle.”

Martin Stead, Head of Brand at EDF Energy, said: “As Britain’s largest producer of low-carbon electricity, we’re proud to be able to support Team Green Britain Bike Week, and we aim to promote cycling as an everyday healthy and practical lifestyle choice that can help the planet too.”

He added: “Team Green Britain aims to inspire the nation to work together and lower the nation’s carbon footprint by 2012. By getting back on our bikes, we can all play our part by reducing our own carbon footprints, while exercising and saving time and money too.”

The mentoring workshops are due to start early next month, and are designed to “provide inspiration as well as practical advice and support for everyone from existing organisers of large events to those just considering their first Dr Bike morning,” with event organisers able to sign up through the Bike Week website or by calling 0845 672 0661.

Meanwhile, event organiser guides have been launched which can be tailored to suit the type and size of events, whether large, medium or small, with two specific guides also targeted specifically at schools and workplaces. The guides promise “ideas and inspiration for organising and promoting events with a comprehensive checklist for a smooth-running event,” as well as advice from Team Green Britain event sustainability consultant, Toby Radcliffe regarding minimising the environmental impact of Bike Week events.

The relaunched Bike Week website, which goes live at 4pm this afternoon, features a new cycle calculator that will allow cyclists by working out how much money they’ve saved in petrol by choosing to use their bike instead of their car, as well as how much longer they can expect to live through cycling a set distance each day.

Bike Week, which provides an umbrella for locally organised initiatives and events across the UK, began as a grass roots organisation in 1923, and nowadays benefits from government funding and backing from the cycling community Cycling England and Cycling Scotland, Sustrans, CTC and Cyclenation.

Anyone wishing to organise a Bike Week event this year should in the first instance register and download an Event Organiser Guide from the website, or call 0845 612 0661, and free materials including posters, flyers, balloons and stickers can also be ordered.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

Add new comment

17 comments

Avatar
mike2000 | 13 years ago
0 likes

I don't mind if EDF want to make us all greener just so long as it doesn't involve making us all glow in the dark too

Avatar
Denzil Dexter | 14 years ago
0 likes

@t1mmyb So everyone's moving back to Chernobyl then?

The science on the safety of low dose radiation is hardly settled because the problem with ascribing deaths to low dose radiation is that it takes a long time to kill you… but their is plenty of evidence that it will kill most people eventually, some faster, some slower depending on when/how/what sort of dosage you receive and for how long you receive it.

http://www.ehjournal.net/content/6/1/1

Avatar
blue | 14 years ago
0 likes

Nuclear power has never been cost-efficient, it's always required heavy government subsidies.
And the UK government has been willing to pay the price, because a nuclear reactor (& re-processing plant) is the only way of producing weapons-grade plutonium.

Avatar
Mr Sock | 14 years ago
0 likes

I don't mind if EDF want to make us all greener just so long as it doesn't involve making us all glow in the dark too

Avatar
Roadkill | 14 years ago
0 likes

cactus are you blowing smoke or smoking....  3

Avatar
Roadkill | 14 years ago
0 likes

Great point - what is the half life of smoke?

Avatar
cactuscat replied to Roadkill | 14 years ago
0 likes
Roadkill wrote:

Great point - what is the half life of smoke?

Don't know, but the half life of smoke *detectors* is 432 years  26  26

Avatar
Roadkill | 14 years ago
0 likes

My point wasn't whether one type of energy is better than another or the the laws around trademarks (I haven't given my opinion on those matters).

It was that EDF are a poor partner for a good cause.... and that they stole the logo - doh! you got me on that one!

bit like Nestle sponsoring obesity week... or kalshnikov sponsoring Help for Heroes (guns don't kill people, people kill people)  3

Avatar
Denzil Dexter | 14 years ago
0 likes

Erm yeah nice to see EDF doing their bit for the planet with er… Bike Week.

I'd have to stick up for them one point though, the Union Jack is 404 years old so copyright on that ran out in 1666 about 50 years before copyright was invented.

Avatar
cat1commuter | 14 years ago
0 likes

Nuclear power is a good thing, and the French should be commended for using it so much. I've never understood why the green movement is so against it. As far as I can tell it is a paranoid fear, since it is "invisible". Some people, such as those living in Ramsar county in Iran, are exposed to very high levels of natural radiation, with no apparent ill effects.

Avatar
Denzil Dexter replied to cat1commuter | 14 years ago
0 likes
cat1commuter wrote:

Nuclear power is a good thing, and the French should be commended for using it so much. I've never understood why the green movement is so against it. As far as I can tell it is a paranoid fear, since it is "invisible". Some people, such as those living in Ramsar county in Iran, are exposed to very high levels of natural radiation, with no apparent ill effects.

Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Nuclear power is a good thing in theory. The problem is that in practise it's in the hands of human beings who no matter how careful they are inevitably make mistakes.

Avatar
cat1commuter replied to Denzil Dexter | 14 years ago
0 likes
Denzil Dexter wrote:

Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Nuclear power is a good thing in theory. The problem is that in practise it's in the hands of human beings who no matter how careful they are inevitably make mistakes.

Even so I'd trade a few Chernobyls for thousands of coal fired power stations belching out pollutants every minute of every day.

Avatar
t1mmyb replied to Denzil Dexter | 14 years ago
0 likes

"The World Health Organisation organised a three-year study of the health impact of Chernobyl and reported in September 2005: a clear increase in thyroid cancer in children who had drunk milk from cows which had grazed on contaminated grass in the week after the explosion, most of whom had been treated successfully; no hard evidence of any increase in any other kind of cancer, whether solid tumours or leukaemia; nor of stillbirths nor of deformed babies; nor of mutated animals or plants. They found that the total number of people who had died as a result of the accident was not thousands or even hundreds. It was fifty-six"
-- Nick Davies, Flat Earth News (p40).

"In my opinion, low doses of radiation are a piss-poor carcinogen and just not a big hitter when it comes to health effects. We have through our fear of radiation parlayed it into a major player when it is not."
-- Dr Antone Brooks, quoted in Flat Earth News (pp 42-43).

Avatar
Roadkill | 14 years ago
0 likes

Beautifully argued  3

Avatar
Barry Fry-up | 14 years ago
0 likes
Quote:

Our Green Union Jack – the one that Ecotricity’s been using for the last three years or so

don't think that's going to stand up in court, since the union jack design is free of copyright. you going to have a go at Vicky P too?

If EDF are prepared to throw some of their giant profit at cycling, then I say that's a step forward, not a step back. A drop in the ocean, mind.

Avatar
Roadkill | 14 years ago
0 likes
Avatar
Roadkill | 14 years ago
0 likes

Way to go Electricité de France! spending the profits from being the third biggest nuclear polluter in the world (after the USA and Canada!) on reducing oil spend....

Interesting how the quotes don't come from their media director... Gordon Brown's brother.

Latest Comments