Trees Not Tees

Number of trees planted by Big Bear Events participants…. 228…as of 25/03/2022
Thank you!!

We’ve partnered with Trees Not Tees to offer you a race entry that will help the environment!

We love our medals, beers, ciders and flapjacks. However we’re aware that some of you aren’t medal enthusiasts, have a huge collection or are using our events as supported training runs. This means your medal goes from us to an old shoe box, or even worse straight in the bin as soon as you get home. This is obviously an unnecessary use of resources, adds to environmental problems and is just a waste.

Trees Not Tees have a solution! You can select the “please plant me a tree” option when you enter an event. This means that the money we would have spent on your medal, drink and flapjack we’ll donate to Trees Not Tees instead and they will plant you a tree in their Scottish woodland. This isn’t a theoretical tree, or part of a tree but an actual tree! They’ll even send you a certificate via email with a picture of your young tree, details of the species of tree they have planted and a geo-location address on what3words!

This is a completely optional initiative. There isn’t a right or wrong choice. There will be no shaming people that want medals and flapjack. We love giving them to people, we take care and pride in our medals and support local business’ with our drinks and flapjack. We don’t do ill fitting T-shirts with crap samples in a bag! So we hope most people would value them, but we know some would be perfectly happy without it. We won’t pressure people either way. It’s an option for everyone to make without fear of judgement from us or your fellow participant. If on race day you decide you’d actually like to donate a tree despite not requesting this on your entry you can let us know and we’ll add you to the donation list for that event. We’ll try and make the reverse true too but this may not be possible if lots of people decide to change their minds!

If you’d like your medal, drink and flapjack but would like to “off-set” the environmental cost by having Trees Not Tees plant you a tree you can always make a donation on-top of your entry to have one planted. This is £6 and you’ll have this option when you enter every event.

You can listen to Jim Mann discuss Tees Not Trees on the British Ultra Running podcast here - he is a very good runner himself!!