The Peak District is one of Britain’s natural treasures, known for its rolling hills, moorland and spectacular gorges. Stretching across Derbyshire and reaching the edges of Manchester and Sheffield, the national park depends on the collective care of all individuals, the government, and businesses, too.
In a bid to make conservation as intrinsic to its everyday operations as network security and customer service, giffgaff has recently launched a number of sustainability initiatives. This includes key partnerships with advertising agencies, cinema chains and climate solutions platforms that will directly benefit the Peak District.
“Nature is not a ‘nice to have’, but essential infrastructure that underpins community resilience, wellbeing, and long-term economic stability,” says Georgina Bramall, CMO at giffgaff, explaining the motivation behind the project.
Advertising for nature
Initially, giffgaff focused on its own environmental footprint. In a competitive market, where the battle for 5G supremacy is cut-throat, advertising is essential – but it also has a significant carbon cost, from production through to the energy used when those ads light up the screens of millions of TVs, laptops and phones.
To address this, giffgaff and media agency MG OMD established the Up to Good Fund – which directs a percentage of the company’s marketing spend into the fund, which is then distributed to environmental causes across the UK.
“The real goal of the fund was to embed environmental responsibility directly into media and advertising,” says Tracey Herald, giffgaff’s ESG lead, and one of the brains behind the initiative.
Since launch, the fund has raised £249,000, partnering with climate platform Ecologi, to plant native trees, restore numerous habitats, and support specialist projects such as peatland restoration, woodland creation, wildflower recovery, and the use of biomass to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. The fund has attracted support from leading players across the sector, including LADbible, Pearl & Dean, and Global to name a few. Together, they’re proving that a small shift in campaign planning can have a transformational impact on UK nature.
Direct investment
Through a restoration project in the Peak District National Park, giffgaff is turning investment in nature into something members can see, feel, and connect with. The project is about inspiring mobile and broadband members alike to engage with the natural world – demonstrating how collective action can support nature and deepen our relationship with the places that sustain us, wherever we are. The connectivity network is investing £250,000 by the end of 2026 to restore a dedicated site of blanket bog through its partnership with Ecologi. By planting sphagnum moss – one of nature’s wonder materials, the work will help return the blanket bog to full health and unlock a host of environmental benefits.
One of the most significant of these is storing away carbon. Healthy peat bogs perform this crucial function, thanks to the presence of sphagnum moss. They also hold water, reducing flooding risk and increasing wildfire resistance, as well as providing improved habitat for moorland wildlife.
To see the power of moorland restoration first-hand, giffgaff also plans to invite some of its members to visit the area and volunteer for the project.
Boosting nature connection
It’s not only via direct investment that giffgaff is encouraging people to experience the outdoor world. It’s also a launch partner of the Wild Spaces initiative, which sees Pearl & Dean cinemas reconnect visitors with the UK’s national parks, including the Peak District.
With support from giffgaff through extra advertising revenue, Pearl & Dean is funding nature restoration projects, and producing documentary-style short films, which take viewers right to the heart of the conservation action.
“Wild Spaces helps audiences understand that national parks are not just places of beauty and recreation, but working landscapes that store carbon, manage water, and support biodiversity – providing vital ecosystem services on which we all rely,” says Herald.
With cinemas across the UK, the project helps spread the word far and wide, helping raise awareness of what needs to be done to safeguard natural landscapes.
“Awareness alone does not restore nature,” Herald adds. “But without public understanding, long-term support for restoration is impossible. Wild Spaces helps build that understanding at scale.”
Sustainability through the business
These initiatives sit alongside a wider sustainability strategy for giffgaff, which publishes its annual impact report each year outlining progress across the business.
Circularity is a key priority for the business, where 66% of devices sold by giffgaff in 2025 were refurbished, helping to inspire lower-impact choices which are better for the planet and for members’ pockets too. The continued rollout of eSIM supports this ambition by embedding lower-impact choices directly into the member journey, reducing the need for physical SIMs, while making it easier for members to get connected. Beyond this, giffgaff is using its tech recycling programme (giffgaffrecycle.com) to make it easier and more rewarding for members to recycle their old devices responsibly. Promotions to link refurbished purchases with enhanced trade-in rewards are nudging members towards choices that extend the life of devices and reduce electronic waste.
To help ensure accountability, giffgaff has established an ESG Committee, chaired by the company’s CFO and supported by key staff from across the organisation, to oversee delivery against its environmental commitments.
The government’s 30by30 commitment – to protect and restore 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030 – recognises that nature recovery has to be treated as a long-term priority, not an optional extra. Businesses have a crucial role to play in making that happen.
Rather than approaching nature restoration as a one-off or seasonal charity appeal, giffgaff treats it more like infrastructure: something society depends on and that therefore needs ongoing investment and maintenance, just like mobile phone masts or fibre-optic broadband cables.
By building support for nature into everyday transactions, giffgaff shows how commercial activity can help restore and protect places such as the Peak District – and how, if more businesses followed suit, the impact on landscapes across the UK could be genuinely transformative.
Learn more about what giffgaff has been up to at giffgaff.com
