Organise a Car-Free Day
Plan To make the day a success you need to plan. Hold a meeting to brainstorm your ideas for getting people out of their cars. Drag a staff member or two along to help you plan and get permission from the right people.
Maximise Your Impact! Hold your Car-Free Day during national Go Green Week in February, when People & Planet groups at schools, colleges and unis across the UK will all be taking action together.
Publicise:
Make sure everyone in your school or college knows what’s happening and how to get involved, try:
Students in Warwick held a sponsored bike race to raise awareness of their car-free days
- assemblies on Green transport
- stalls to sign people up to the ‘car-free challenge’
- notes in the register, emails and noticeboards (get staff on board to help with this)
- put up eye-catching posters everywhere
- t-shirts, banners, green face paints…get creative!
- Use Car-Free pledge forms to gather support
Go For it! Fill the day with fun activities like:
- a competition between year/ tutor groups. Students earn points for leaving cars at home, get exciting prizes for the winners from the local council or cycle shops.
- a ‘buddies’ scheme of older students walking with younger students
- a free breakfast for people who don’t come by car
- get the Bike Doctor in to service people’s bikes for free
- cycling lessons from Bikeability
- a fun gimmick like a bike-powered smoothie maker or sound system (your office contact can help sort this)
- a car-sharing scheme
Make sure you take loads of photos and send them to us for the Go Green photo competition.
Don’t forget to count the non-car journeys to school or college with another quick hands-
up survey (or from your competition results) so you can compare it to a normal day.
You can find out how much carbon you saved with this nifty online calculator
Previous: Counting the Cars Transport Survey Next: Go Car-Free for Good
