Spider-Man and Batman vs air pollution

It’s the superhero face-off that everyone has been talking about: No not Batman vs Superman, but superheroes vs a far bigger threat – air pollution – thanks to half a million school children across the nation. 

The annual Big Pedal event tasks schools with clocking up as many cycling or scooting journeys as they can, with prizes on offer for the schools that saw pupils making the most journeys. This year almost half a million school children took part, saving over 63million balloons of carbon dioxide, which would otherwise have been emitted from cars on the school run. 

The event ran over April 18th to 29th and over 1,300 schools took part, with five primary and four secondary schools winning the prizes. Parents saved around £384,000 in fuel through the inter school competition and approximately 57 million calories were used up. We’re waiting for stats on how much costume hire business was done for the ‘superhero day’ of the competition.

Sustrans runs the competition. 

“School children across the country have made heroic efforts to beat air pollution this year and really demonstrated what a massive difference they can make by cycling or scooting to school," said Ben Merry, senior project officer Primary Education at Sustrans. 

"The Big Pedal gives us an idea of what could be achieved if there were more safe routes to schools and training to develop cycling and scooting for children’s transport. For two weeks during the Big Pedal school gates around Britain were less dangerous, the air was cleaner and children had a healthy, fun start to the day. With the right level of funding this could happen every week.”

PIC CREDIT: Sustrans volunteer Livia Lazar