PROJECT SUMMARY
This project “Pick one leave none” is focusing on outdoor sports. More precise, the focus of the project is on the environmental impact of recreational hiking and mountaineering activities on marked and maintained trails in nature. We are geographically focused on the Western Balkans area as it has significantly more prominent environmental problems than the rest of Europe. The outdoors is recognized by the European Commission as a keyway to engage people with health enhancing physical activity as the analysis shows that 40% of those participating do so in the outdoors.
The number of participants in such activities are going in a good direction, but the concern is how to ensure that this happens in ways that are sustainable, responsible and with minimized impact on ecosystems and the ecology of the natural areas, of which hiking trails, as probably the biggest public sport terrains are a part of. The project proposes an idea of simple and widely applicable outdoor ethics for the recreational hiking population that should bring sustainability on hiking trails regarding the hardly decomposable solid waste problem.
Pick One Leave None Toolkit 4 SUMMARY Essentially, it is a very simple idea that every hiker who accepts our concept to leave nothing in nature and to bring back with him only one piece of solid garbage that he finds on hiking trail, becomes small part of big movement which is needed to bring sustainable solution of the problem.
Through our partnership, we analyzed the problem, proposed and tested three possible variants of the litter collecting system, to choose the most usable one and to disseminate the idea to the rising number of hikers and mountaineers. Analysis and testing procedures were conducted on four different types of mountains and different types of hiking trails, in four Western Balkan states – Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Croatia.
The Tara mountain in Serbia is in a national park under medium pressure of visitors. Medvednica is in protected area at the outskirts the Croatian capital with more than 1 million of visits per year. Jakupica, in North Macedonia, is a mountain with huge areas of pristine nature and Majevica in Bosnia and Herzegovina is specific of many settlements and a large number of vacation houses on its slopes.
LEVELS
PICK ONE LEAVE NONE toolkit is designed to be accessible and easy to understand for absolutely all potential users.
The toolkit is developed in three levels, from the simplest, basic principles, through slightly advanced more detailed variant, to a comprehensive detailed toolkit.
CORE is the first level of elaboration. These are the very basic PICK ONE LEAVE NONE principles. It is widely applicable to gain the interest of all target groups. In the project implementation this level is used on the information boards. It consists of very simple, easy-to-understand messages. These messages clearly and unequivocally indicate what needs to be done to keep our hiking trails clean.
The next, INTERMEDIATE level of elaboration involves further clarification of the basic PICK ONE LEAVE NONE principles. It provides additional information still keeping it very clear and simple. Wherever possible, when using the CORE level it is practical to have a QR code that leads to the corresponding page on our website, where all the information is found.
And finally ADVANCED, as the third level of elaboration is practically implementation of all the recommendations that this toolkit provides. In this document, all aspects of the PICK ONE LEAVE NONE principle are explained in detail, including data about the project, the analyzes carried out within the implementation of the project, the conclusions we reached and all other information that is important for the sustainability of the PICK ONE LEAVE NONE principle.
This comprehensive document is primarily intended for instructors, trainers, teachers, guides, protected area managers and others that in their scope of work train or advise other people to be able to pass on knowledge about the PICK ONE LEAVE NONE principles. And this document is easily accessible to all users, written in English in a simple form, and as such represents a kind of guarantee for the sustainability of the PICK ONE LEAVE NONE principle even after the end of the project.