With environmentalism being high on many climbers' agendas, it's great to see the Peak District Stanage Bus back in operation.

The No. 284 bus between Stanage and Hathersage will run on summer Sundays and bank holiday Mondays from 29 March to 18 October 2009.

The BMC-run Access and Conservation Trust (ACT) has again contributed funding to help make the bus viable. It's a fully accessible bio-diesel bus with space for bikes/climbing equipment.

• More info on the BMC Website
• Bus Timetable.

(And while we're on the subject of Stanage - it might be worth mentioning that Beanabout Coffee (see photo) have been granted permission to be in the Plantation car park, as of the 1st of April, for those midday lunch breaks, although we're not sure how this fits in with the environmental angle!)

People need to gradually adjust their expectations of what is acceptable and what is excessive

Dan Varian - Beastmaker

Another organisation keen to promote their green credentials are Beastmaker (and as usual they do so in their own imitable vernacular). In their recent blog post Climbing and climate change they claim their hypermiling ability is 'badass'.

Dan Varian writes about his recent bouldering success (at an undisclosed location - he's "keeping the venue quite for now", although die-hard boulderers will no doubt already be in the know):

"I did my project, it's 25 minutes drive away, I can do the 50 mile round-trip on 3-4 litres of petrol in a 1.2 Vauxhall Corsa (45-58mpg). It's taken me six sessions so that's around 20 litres of petrol."

This new problem is called Serendipity and adds a new Font 8A on to the start of Serenity (which is already Font 8A+/8B and was first climbed by Mike Adams). A one move Font 8A in to an existing Font 8a+/B - sounds impressive, but I'm more impressed with Dan's fuel calculations and enviro-climbing credentials:

"We're taking steps at Beastmaker to try and stay 'green' from our initial set up stage. Currently we are failing in 2 areas. We haven't been able to reliably ascertain the source of our wood as the wood-yard owners struggle with adding up our orders consistently. This is something we will be changing ASAP, as well as trialling different woods such as lime (common in the UK), along with one-off woods from tree surgeon fellings...

...We also aim to use no plastic in our packaging. So this will see a return to the 90's when chip butties came in newspaper, not polystyrene. The packaging won't compromise the product in any way and you may even be able to read an article or two. We'll be using the Guardian I imagine as the Independent is a bit small for our boards."