The environment

Making a positive difference

As well as having a nice walk, there are a few things that can be done to leave the environment in slightly better state than it was before:

• Reduce pollution by looking out for ghost gear washed up on the beaches, doing a #2minutebeachclean and fighting litter.
• Contribute to scientific research by photographing seals and choughs and reporting marine strandings
• Assist the maintenance of the footpath network by feeding back overgrown paths or failing structures to the Countryside Team.

The power of "the crowd" is that tens of thousands of people each making things "slightly better" can start to add up to something really significant.

Connecting with the environment

Walking brings us into contact with many different aspects of the natural environment including natural and man-made landscape features, flora and fauna. The location-driven content-push mechanism within the app provides a powerful new way to serve extremely relevant information about the thing you are literally stood right next to. We use this to provide some insight by answering “why” and not just “what” on a broad range of natural history and environmental topics as well as heritage.

Doing walks without a car

See our accessibility page for some info about travelling to do walks without a car.

Waste-free content delivery

The iWalk Cornwall app delivers content without the need for paper (and all the bleaching chemicals and road transport associated with that). Updates don’t involve “second editions” being printed and unsold stock being pulped. It is an example of the circular economy paradigm where a pre-existing resource (phone) is reused for another purpose (walks) and the only additional resource required is electrity, and that can be generated from the wind and sunshine.