Louisa Pearson: ‘Should something good for health but bad for the planet be frowned upon?’

Well, I think they’re going to have to add a new picture to the evolutionary scale, one that shows Homo horizontalis. This person cannot stand upright, having spent the festive season sitting either on a sofa or at a dining table. As you may have guessed, the waistbands of those who reside in the Green Bunker seem to have expanded over the last few weeks. Time to join a gym? I don’t think so. The exercise regime I’m after is one that doesn’t require heated buildings or electricity-guzzling machinery.

According to the Scottish Household Survey of 2009, 74 per cent of adults had participated in sport during the four weeks relevant to the study. So what were they doing? Walking for 30 or more minutes was the top pursuit, followed by swimming (15 per cent), multi-gym/weight training, aerobics and cycling (eight per cent each), dancing, golf and football (seven per cent), hillwalking and running (five per cent), snooker/billiards (four per cent) and bowls (three per cent). I can sense some of you are already getting ready for a debate on whether billiards is a sport.

Walking is my personal favourite because it’s free, easy (steep gradients notwithstanding) and you can do it in ordinary clothes and footwear. For these reasons, it might well be declared the greenest sport of all. Except that some people get just as sniffy about walking as they do about billiards in terms of whether it’s a real sport. Have they not seen those people on TV at the Olympics doing that funny wiggly walk?

But let’s move on to the other activities. Several have a teensy carbon footprint, requiring not much more than a pair of trainers and comfortable clothing. But is there such a thing as an eco-friendly trainer? Why yes. Two brands that fit the bill are Brooks (www.brooksrunning.co.uk), whose Green Silence trainer is made from 75 per cent recycled materials, and Veja (www.veja.fr), whose trainers are created using organic, fairly traded cotton and natural rubber.

If football, netball, volleyball or rugby is your thing, you could invest in a Fairtrade ball from a company called Ethletics (www.thefaircorp.com). Fair trade swimwear? I’ve struggled to find any and have concerns about chemical-treated, heated indoor pools, but if you’re off ‘wild swimming’, who am I to get in your way. It also leads us into the debate of whether something that’s good for health but bad for the planet should be frowned upon. Let’s face it, 50 lengths in the local pool doesn’t exactly compare to taking a long-haul flight each week.

Yoga fans should be able to track down an eco-friendly mat made from natural rubber, such as those in the Manduka eKO range (www.manduka.com), to make your downward dog all the more virtuous. Sports that take place outdoors get a thumbs up (unless you have to drive to get there) but if you’re attending an indoor exercise session, try checking if they are signed up to a green electricity tariff. Have they considered solar panels or rigging the exercise bikes up to a generator? Hopefully they won’t call security and you can smile as you sweat, content your exercise regime is as green as it possibly can be. n