On 22nd April, Stuart Cocks embarked on a pretty epic commute: cycling 38 miles to work and, thanks to his friends blasting past his pledge target, another 38 miles back again. By raising an impressive 64 pledges (and saving over 5 tonnes CO2), he earned the title of April’s Doer of the Month.
Here’s his story.
I work as an Analyst for Barclays Bank and wanted to do something a bit different. Being a bit of an avid cyclist I like to think of the environmental impact of my day to day life. A friend recommended Do Nation, and after browsing through for a couple of minutes, I had decided I wanted to get involved.
I really liked the idea of making change rather than giving it and have always thought this is the best way to positively impact our future.
The campaign to cycle to work was made (38 miles from Sheffield to Leeds), and the date was set! In the upcoming weeks to the event, I persuaded a few of my work friends to try and get involved, and in no time at all, I was giving talks to whole departments about how to get involved.
I had lots of very positive encouragement from everyone (those who pledged and those who didn’t). Once I realised that my initial goal was going to be hit within a couple of days I pushed them all to meet 5,000kg of CO2 saved, with the incentive to see me cycling back from work on the same day (78 miles in total).
I had a great time gathering all the pledges and pushing people to think about their own environmental impact and sustainability. Everyone was very supportive of this at my workplace and in my personal life, with some daring pledges made (notably my boss giving up alcohol for two months).
The cycle went ahead without a hiccup, albeit a bit tough at times. Getting home and seeing my family spurred me on the last couple of miles with a promised takeaway to celebrate.
This is definitely something I would recommend to people, just remember to make it nice and competitive and let people see what difference they are making.
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