Sustainability at the Great North Swim

As an event, we’re committed to delivering safe and well organised events for participants and our host locations, as sustainably as possible.

Here are a few things we are doing (click to read more) .

Travel & Transport

We encourage everyone travelling to and from our events to make use of public transport. We continue to work with the local Ferry providers to enable water transport to the event.

For 2025, we provided a park and ride solution at Rydal farm, to try and reduce the number of cars travelling to event site and provide a more sustainable option. The park and ride promoted car sharing, as one price per vehicle. We will have the park and ride again this year – details will be released nearer to the event.

Consider car sharing – sharing a car with another 3 people reduces your travel emissions by a quarter and can be comparable to public transport.

Parking on site – This year the parking on site will be reserved for those who are car sharing. Further details with regards to purchasing onsite parking will be released in April, however this is extremely limited.

After each event we invite feedback from our participants and as part of this process we monitor how people travel to the event. This information is used to compare and contrast across different events.

Stay longer – don’t just stay for the event, make a trip out of it. Stay longer, see the sites and combine the event with a holiday, maximizing the benefit of your travel! The Lake District National Park has plenty to offer!

Image showing swimmers in the water

Hydration

We understand and share customer and community concerns about single use plastics, so we’re working hard to reduce them. As part of our drive to improve the sustainability of our swim events there will be no free bottled water available at the events (with the exception of water at the medical facilities).

We encourage swimmers and spectators to bring their own reusable bottles and make use of the refill stations around the event site.

There will also be reusable cups on sale at the event for participants that might not have their own.

In 2025, all our volunteer and crew packed lunches provided by Greggs were vegetarian or vegan. This saved the equivalent of 1kgCO2e per meal compared to a meat-based option.

Image showing water refill station

General Waste Reduction

We work with local partners across the UK to remove waste from site and recycle as much as possible. This is not limited to plastic and includes cardboard, wooden pallets, medals, clothing and signage.

We will be improving our signage at events directing runners and spectators to waste bins, recycling points, and our water refill points, to help people dispose of rubbish correctly and responsibly.

Event waste is separated at source to ensure as much is recycled as possible, all visitors will be encouraged to use the correct bins accordingly.

When your wetsuit is getting tired, we recommend to looking at repairing and re-using it before looking to replace.

If you must replace, can you buy second hand? If you are buying new, can you buy something that will suit multi-activities?

We are working with local leisure centres to donate any spare swim caps left over from our events. This helps give the swim caps a new life and support the local community.

Power

We will continue to expand our use of battery power provision at our events and where applicable, we will use eco-efficient lights to illuminate our build sites before and after the event. We use the one site power provision at Brockhole as opposed to diesel generators where possible.

Where possible we will monitor fuel usage, and look to access a green energy supply, and in certain areas switch to hybrid generators to reduce our carbon footprint.

Medals

All our medals are produced using a 100% recycled zinc alloy and an rPet lanyard. Medals that are left at the end of the year are all recycled back into scrap metal.

Water Quality at Windermere

Every year we conduct a large number of water quality tests of our own, looking at both bacteria and algae levels in the Lake. We intend to carry on this process and have capacity to increase this testing if any new water quality issues are drawn to our attention.

We are currently looking at how we can as an organisation scale up our commitment to supporting the long-term health of the Lake.

Last year the team from Lake District Diving helped us with Lake Shore Cleansing to ensure the site at Brockhole was as pristine as it should be. We plan to have them back again.

Great North Swim is committed to continuously working to reduce our environmental impact. We feedback after each event and this year we are conducting independent research to audit our performance and improve our work.

What You Can Do

What you can do to go further….

A new Love Windermere partnership launched in July 2022. It's the biggest-ever cooperation of sectors to tackle challenges in the lake. The partnership is developing a science-based plan to set out a road map for environmental protection that could be replicated across the UK. Read about what the Love Windemere campaign is doing to help protect the long-term health of the lake. Read more here.

We really recommend reading articles from Outdoor Swimmer which will give you plenty of information about wild swimming. You can also read the ‘Swimming without a trace’ article from the Outdoor Swimming Society here which gives great advice on key environmental considerations when swimming outdoors.

1001 Outdoor Swimming Tips (Environmental, safety, training and gear advice for cold-water, open-water and wild swimmers) by Calum Maclean is a great and informative book packed with lots of tips.

You can check if they are likely to be sewage spills upstream of where you want to swim on The Rivers Trust sewage map.