What Happened When We Gave Our Trails a Voice
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
In 2025, we tried something different. Instead of telling people what not to do on trails, we asked a simpler question: What makes this place yours?
‘These Are My Trails’ was a pilot project built on a belief that when people feel connected to a place, they take care of it. So rather than focusing on single-use pollution as the problem, we wanted to focus on care as a behaviour in itself.
So to the A-TEAM group chat we went! We put out a call out for 5 incredible individuals to join the HQ team to bring this idea to life in their local trails. And just as a band introduces their band mates on stage at a concert, it’s to no further ado to gas up those who kindly took part!
John, killer moustache Bellis
Laurence, king of the hills Ward
Leon, wish he was my uncle Rosser
Gill, dog walking multitasking Houlsby
James, carries it all MacKeddie
With our army assembled around the country, we took to the ‘napkin drawing’ approach using theory based behaviour change to design a series of positive, nature-led signs to be installed at the A-TEAMers local trails - giving a voice to the plants and animals that call these places home.
To accompany these signs was what we called a ‘GeoTrash Box’ - stocked to the brim of bin bags, gloves, a trail clean logbook - theoretically everything someone needs to take care of their trails, which meant that TFT were able to have a presence on the trail without someone having to actually be there in person. Risky? Yes, likely - but there was only one way to find out!
What unfolded throughout the year can only be described as a mix between watching David Attenborough and Big Brother at the same time, we were left constantly inspired, speechless, and thought provoked - so a year later, here’s our little ‘Big Brother Reunion’ of how the project went!
The Good
When the campaign launched at the start of 2025, there was a big virtual ‘pat on the back’ going round the office as we managed to create a buzz of momentum online surrounding the prospect of what we were doing. It felt like we’d tapped into something pretty special. Maybe we weren’t talking nonsense after all?
Across the chosen locations, volunteers gave their time, energy, and creativity to make the project happen and 86% felt it had a positive impact on their community.
At Laurence's site in Scotland in particular it was regularly interacted with by members of the community, so much so that we saw a 90% reduction in single-use pollution! We think this is what dreams are made of. Whilst we’re still building consistency in how we measure this across all sites with the different factors at play, the early signs were clear: positive messaging can work.
And this was noticed in how people started to talk differently about their trails. Every now and again the signs started popping up in our feed, like a mini mushroom on Mario Kart giving us a boost to keep going.
The Challenges
But every now again there’s a banana peel on rainbow road, or a paint splatter on your widescreen that makes it a little bit harder to see through. And as much as we planned for various factors on our risk tracker, this wasn’t a perfect project - yet that’s exactly why it mattered.
Some trail locations had bins nearby, others didn’t. Some were more urban environments to rural areas. But as this was a small sample size, it’s hard to draw exact conclusions on which factors had the biggest influence to why at least half of the signs and boxes were suspect to theft or vandalism.
Each knock down we got, proved keeping the momentum going across the year difficult, as we learnt as well as caring for the trails, we needed to care for the physical interventions for the trails even more so.
The Learnings
Who’s ready to put this one on a landscape italic photo on Etsy? ‘You can’t force connection. But you can invite it.’
Acknowledging the fact that not everyone who walks past a sign will change their behaviour, not everyone will pick up a bag or log their actions. And that’s okay.
Because this project wasn’t about instant transformation. It was about planting seeds, and remembering to water them. We now have no doubt that positive messaging resonates more than negative instructions, that local ownership is powerful, but it needs a support network. And that we’re still learning how to measure impact properly and effectively.
How to get involved
Liked what you see and want to bring a slice of this momentum to your local trails? Grab a multipack of special edition These Are My Trails waymarkers at our shop for just a tenner!
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