RBS employees, Devon Redfearn, David Monalinan, Mithil Shah, Rosemary Whaley and Joan Wilson have all signed up to Sustrans’ Scottish Workplace Journey Challenge
A total of £54,000 in savings have been made by employees who pledged to travel more actively to work as part of Sustrans Scotland’s Workplace Journey Challenge last month.
Funded by Transport Scotland, the free month-long Challenge saw 3,059 people from 218 Scottish businesses travel in ways that benefitted their health, well-being and the environment.
Workplaces across the country competed with each other to see who could clock up the most walking, cycling, public transport and car-sharing journeys in March in a bid to win more than £2,000 worth of prizes.
And, as well as saving £53,919.6 by swapping car journey’s for more sustainable alternatives, employees saved 54,745kg in CO2 emissions and burned the equivalent of 33,744 donuts in calories.
Transport Minister Humza Yousaf said: “Congratulations to all who took part in this year’s Scottish Workplace Journey Challenge. It’s great to see how many people across Scotland are making smarter travel choices, and getting the health benefits from walking and cycling on their daily commute.
“The Scottish Government will continue to invest in infrastructure and behaviour change programmes to ensure people have the widest choice possible for their everyday journeys.”
Sustrans’ Smarter Choices Workplace Coordinator, Jenny Muir said: “It’s fantastic to see how our Workplace Journey Challenge has been taken up by so many diverse organisations across the country.
“There has been a great element of fun in the challenge. Watching people tweet their pictures of their journey to work has inspired others and of course there has been healthy competition between different companies.
“By encouraging people to make small changes to the way they get to work, we hope it will inspire them to make sustainable, long-term changes to the way they travel.”
“ A huge thanks to Sustrans for running this initiative, it’s given me the impetus to make a lifestyle change I'd intended to make for a while. ”
Participants used an online platform to log their sustainable journeys and competed to climb a leader board. They had access to feedback on how many calories they’d burned and the amount of money they’d saved on each journey by choosing healthy, green and cheap alternatives to driving.
Individual challengers were judged on the number of journeys they complete while workplaces were judged on the overall rate of participation in the team.
Organisations taking part in Sustrans Scotland’s Workplace Journey Challenge included Standard Life Scotland, RBS and Scottish Power.
Magnus L from Edinburgh Leisure added: “So the challenge is over and the website won't log the miles I'm doing now, but I'm now back on my bike regardless.
“A huge thanks to Sustrans for running this initiative, it’s given me the impetus to make a lifestyle change I'd intended to make for a while. I suspect I'd still be saying 'maybe tomorrow' if I hadn't signed up.
“Maybe next year I won't be entering 'car' into the 'How would you normally make this journey' field.”
Winners
Congratulations to all our winners and a massive thank you to all the organisations who took part.
| Category | Winners |
| 3-19 employees | Joint first place: SEStran, Naete box, Craft Box, SESPlan |
| 20-89 employees | Joint first: Edinburgh Festival Fringe society, Buro Happold Engineering, APAC (Advanced Procurement for Universities and Colleges) |
| 90-249 employees |
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| 250-499 employees |
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| 500-999 employees |
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| 1000+ employees |
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