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As Forest’s “River Bike” partnership with The Rivers Trust comes to its end, the company is redesigning its fleet of blue bikes to celebrate the natural world by launching a Planet Earth inspired bike design.
The River Bike fleet, launched in August 2023, has helped to raise more than £30,000 for The Rivers Trust in support of the River Buffers campaign.
The donation will be used to create networks of wildlife corridors along all rivers in the UK.
Forest exceeded its expected donation of £15,000 by 100% thanks to the uptake of the River Bike by riders throughout the partnership.
Laura Elms, Forest’s head of sustainability, said: “It has been fantastic to see what our River Bikes have achieved. Not only has our donation made a lasting impact on the UK’s rivers, it’s connected our riders with our sustainability mission.
“As a business, we don’t claim to be solving the world’s climate issues but we do believe we can run our company in a way that is aligned with a greener future for our planet.
“We take proactive steps to reduce our impact and where we still have emissions we work with offsetting organisations and other charities that are UK based and which we can visit first hand.”
With the conclusion of The Rivers Trust charity partnership, Forest is now integrating the company’s fleet of blue bikes with its original Forest green bikes in a cost effective and energy efficient way.
The blue bikes were originally bought second hand but unused by another shared e-bike provider, on recommendation from Forest’s sustainability partner Greenly, to help reduce the company’s Scope 3 emissions by avoiding new commissioning of e-bikes from the manufacturer.
The chosen new design harks back to Forest’s central mission to improve air quality and support the future of our planet. The design features global land masses and highlights forests across the globe.
Riders’ attention is drawn to one specific Forest in Abergavenny in Wales which is where Forest has planted its own Giant Sequoia Tree Grove as part of The Great Reserve, a project dedicated to protecting the Giant Sequoia species, currently on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Endangered Species Red List.
As outlined in Forest’s recently published Sustainability Report, the company is working with The Great Reserve to offset its Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, minus the avoided emissions from the purchase of second hand bikes.
