Green exercise worth £2.2bn to public health, study finds

According to a study published in the journal Preventative Medicine, outdoor exercise delivers an estimated £2.2 billion of health benefits to adults in England annually.

The study cited that over eight million people each week took part in at least 30 minutes of green exercise.

Lead author Mathew White from the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter, said: “What we look at here is something that can be converted relatively simply into monetary values.

“There are very clear ideas about how much physical activity needs to be done in order to benefit health. What we have done here is to focus on those people who use the natural environment for enough activity a week (5x30 minutes) in order to justify gains in their health.

White added: “First of all we looked at the total number of people that went to the natural environment in England each year. Then we looked at the total number of people who engage in what we call an active visit (cycling, walking, running etc).

"We then looked at how often they did that, and if they did it enough times to benefit their health which we converted into something called Quality Adjusted Life Years, which could then be converted into monetary estimates."

The calculations suggested green spaces were worth an average of £2.2 billion per year.

White maintained: "Just to make it clear, we are not saying this is the only way. There were a lot of people who achieve the physical activity guidelines who never went to nature, so we are not saying that it is the only way to do it but we are saying that a very large number of people who do achieve the guidelines do use nature."

The findings also revealed that ‘people from higher socio-economic groups were more active in the environment, than people from lower socio-economic groups’.

White concluded: "We already know that many people with weight issues do not like going to the gym because they feel socially embarrassed, whereas a walk in the park does not have that stigma.

"We think it really takes the pressure of these groups in particular. The cost to the health service of obesity is just enormous and is growing every year. If we can encourage more people to do these simple activities outdoors we can make significant inroads into that trend."