Air pollution is one of the UK's biggest environmental health risks. Yet unlike litter on our streets, poor air quality is often invisible. That’s why Clean Air Day is so important, it helps turn awareness into action.
 

But improving air quality isn't the responsibility of a single person, organisation or policy. Cleaner air is created through collective action; thousands of decisions made every day by individuals, businesses, transport providers and local authorities working towards the same goal.
 

And the evidence shows that when people are given practical alternatives to private car journeys, they embrace them.

What is Clean Air Day?

Clean Air Day is the UK's largest campaign dedicated to tackling air pollution and improving public awareness of air quality.


The annual event brings together communities, businesses, schools and local authorities to raise awareness of air pollution, share practical solutions and encourage positive behaviour change. The objective is to demonstrate how small, everyday decisions can collectively create cleaner, healthier places to live, work and travel.

Why clean air matters more than ever

Air quality affects far more than the environment.Poor air quality has been linked to respiratory diseases, cardiovascular conditions and reduced quality of life. Children, older people and those with existing health conditions are particularly vulnerable.
 

The challenge is that much of the pollution affecting our communities comes from everyday activities, particularly transport. Road transport remains one of the largest contributors to urban air pollution, especially in towns and cities where short journeys are often made by car.

Practical alternatives to cars

Societal change happens when individual behaviours are adopted at scale. And shared bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters are helping people rethink how they travel around towns and cities.
 

Our 2025 Rider Report, based on responses from more than 11,000 users across 17 schemes, provides some of the strongest evidence yet that micromobility is driving measurable behavioural change. The findings revealed that:
 

• 62% of riders used Beryl to replace a journey that would otherwise have been taken by a car, van or taxi. 
• 41% of riders now consider Beryl their first choice for their most common journeys. 
• 68% said Beryl enabled journeys they otherwise would not have taken.
   

These are not occasional leisure trips; the largest use case for Beryl is commuting to work, accounting for 29% of journeys, while another 18% are used for everyday errands. This demonstrates that micromobility is increasingly becoming part of everyday infrastructure rather than a novelty activity.

Proof that collective action works

The most compelling evidence comes from what happens when infrastructure improvements and behavioural change meet.
 

In Norwich, Beryl data showed that after the installation of a segregated cycle lane, the number of users travelling along the route increased by more than 60%, while journeys made using shared bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters increased by 165%.
 

These figures tell an important story; when adoption grows, the benefits extend beyond individual users to entire communities through reduced congestion, lower emissions and improved air quality.

Moving forward

Clean Air Day is a much-needed call for collective action, demanding progress from organisations, policymakers and communities to come together and make better choices for the air we all share.
 

And we know that when sustainable transport becomes accessible, people use it. And when thousands of those decisions combine, the result is cleaner air, healthier communities and more liveable towns and cities.
 

And who doesn’t want that?