A UK community interest company, founded in 2017, that gets mountain bikers, runners and walkers to clear litter from trails and records what they find.
Trash Free Trails (TFT) is a movement that asks people who use trails to take responsibility for them. Mountain bikers, runners, walkers and clubs go out, pick up litter and record what they find through TFT surveys, and the information feeds an annual State of Our Trails report, described as the UK's first inventory of land-based plastic pollution. It also runs Community Hubs, where clubs, bike shops and cafes receive branded kit and agree to hold at least four clean-ups a year, and an approval scheme with Bronze, Silver and Gold levels for events that want to reduce their environmental impact.
Dom Ferris founded TFT in 2017 after an Instagram post that got 62 likes. Before that he ran the beach clean programme at Surfers Against Sewage. It started a community interest company guided by eight core values, including celebrating every volunteer and avoiding blame and shame. The mission is to reconnect people with the outdoors through hands-on action: the core principle is "if you use it, look after it". Dom Ferris has said the group is defined by what it supports and not what it opposes. In 2021, he and Rich Breeden were the only full-time staff.
TFT's work is across the UK. Volunteers have cleared over 14,000 km of trail, according to a 2025 article, and clean-ups have happened all over Britain. Hardline Wales has been a Gold-standard TFT Approved event since 2022 and the National Trust was an early backer. In 2021 it ran the Trash Mob Academy, a six-week programme for young people from a children's referral school in Wakefield, which combines education about plastic pollution with cycling. TFT is also launching in Australia in 2026, but our focus here is its UK work. We did not find a UK office address.
The culture is described as volunteer-led and deliberately flexible. Ferris encourages people and lets them run with ideas, and the team uses terms such as "inspo" for inspiring people and "DIO" for Do It Ourselves. One Australian leader quoted in 2025 said the movement is "not a brand, it's more than a brand". The movement also produces pegs for a reusable flagging system called Speed Mark, so events no longer use plastic tape. These are descriptions by the founder and the press, and we have not checked how the organisation works internally today.
In a small organisation like this, one person might handle community support, event partnerships, data and reporting, communications, and fundraising. Roles may include community managers who look after the hubs, research and data staff who turn survey results into reports, partnership managers who work with outdoor brands, and operations or finance support. If you ride, run or walk and care about wild places, this is a way to see environmental work from the inside. Check the TFT website for what it is currently looking for.
Website: www.trashfreetrails.org
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