One positive thing the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us is that businesses and individuals can be really adaptable when they need to be. Now that many of us are able to work from home and we’ve learned how to use Zoom for meetings, it’s time to capitalise on these changes and use them to reduce our emissions long term.
From commuting and cars to holidays, flying, and how our food reaches us, here’s our Big Green Ideas List for travelling better.
Make your travel count
Take fewer, longer holidays
Travel less often and spend longer at your destination when you get there. With the cost of flights, vaccinations and potentially quarantine such a huge part of the overall cost, spending an extra week but going less often will save you money (and generate fewer emissions) in the long run.
Combine travel with volunteering
Feeling guilty about wanting to see the world? Make it count by volunteering at a charitable organisation like GoEco or VolunteerHQ.
Have adventures at home
Maybe you travel for the excitement of seeing new places and having new experiences. But are you truly living the life you already have?
Here are some ideas to get more out of living where you are:
- Switch off your TV and disconnect from social media
- Go to that bar you’ve always looked at from the outside, but never gone in
- Go and see local bands and plays
- Visit art galleries, open studios and museums, and talk to the curators and artists
- Try that restaurant you’re curious about
- Go and try rock climbing, dancing, pottery, or whatever it is you’ve been thinking about doing
- Join clubs
- Try adult education
- Go to protests
- Go to festivals
- Get an Ordnance Survey Explorer map (either paper or on your phone), and follow a footpath that you’ve wondered about
Use your car less
Walk or cycle more
Walk shorter distances rather than use the car, e.g. anywhere within your village, or into town at lunchtime. In addition to the environmental benefits, it will improve your fitness, give you time to think and save you money on parking and fuel.
Use public transport
Support local services and reduce pollution by using public transport wherever possible. If your area has good public transport, you may not need your car most of the time – and when you do, you could use a taxi and train, hire a car or join a car club.
If your area isn’t so lucky, use buses and trains when you can.
The cost of the bus fare may be offset by the savings on fuel, parking, depreciation, insurance, road tax and wear and tear. Plus you’ll gain time to spend reading, on social media, or catching up on emails and life admin.
Join a car share club
If you only need a car occasionally, there’s no need to buy a car with all the hassle and expense that comes with it – join a car share club instead. Car share clubs usually charge a small monthly fee, plus per-mile or per-hour charges when you use them. Fuel may be included. You save the cost of insurance, servicing, repairs, MOTs, car tax and depreciation.
Be patient
Write a list of things you need, but not urgently. Instead of buying them in multiple deliveries from Amazon, save them up for a single trip to town once a month. This helps support local businesses, keeps money in your community, and keeps travel and packaging to a minimum.
Use your car better
Reduce microplastic pollution from tyre wear
Normal road wear and braking contribute to microplastic pollution as your tyres wear down. Driving more consistently (with less braking) will help reduce tyre wear – but the best solution is to drive fewer miles.
Get your car serviced regularly
A properly serviced car will be more efficient.
Practice “eco-driving”
There are lots of ways you can drive more efficiently and save fuel, for example:
- Make sure your tyres are inflated to the right pressure
- Drive at a consistent speed, rather than speeding up and then braking
- Change gear at 2500 revs (petrol) or 2000 revs (diesel)
- Remove all the junk from your boot (trunk) to reduce the weight
Follow this link for lots more eco-driving suggestions from the Institute of Advanced Motoring.
Get a less polluting car
Get a more efficient/less polluting car
Trade in your old diesel or petrol car (or one from a manufacturer that cheats on emissions tests) for a more modern, less polluting vehicle. Or even better…
Get an electric car
Electric cars have been around long enough to reach the second-hand market so buying electric needn’t break the bank, and ranges are improving all the time.
If you are charging your car from a renewable source, the lifetime emissions of an electric car will be substantially lower than those of an equivalent internal combustion engine car,[1] even after manufacturing costs are taken into account.
The benefit of electric cars is greatest in countries with a high proportion of renewable energy in the overall mix, such as Sweden and France. In the UK, the emission savings are about 30% compared to traditional vehicles. However, the UK’s energy mix is improving as coal is phased out in favour of renewable energy, so this will keep getting better.
Learn about electric cars
Get an idea of the ranges and prices of the current range of electric cars. Even if you’re not in a position to buy yet, you can dispel myths about poor ranges and hopefully convince car buyers to consider a more sustainable model.
Reduce your commute
Use video conferencing instead of travelling to meetings
Consider whether it’s really necessary to travel to a meeting in person. As we learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, team meetings, board meetings, interviews, and document reviews can all be done remotely using video conferencing or teleconferencing, and collaborative work can be done via apps like Teams and G-suite which allow multiple users to edit the same document at the same time.
Work from home
If you normally work in the office five days a week, working from home one day a week will reduce your commuting transport emissions by 20%. Working from home two days a week would give you a 40% reduction, and so on.
Work part-time
If you drop whole days, working part-time will reduce your emissions from commuting. Working part-time also creates time for you to spend on sustainable but time-consuming activities like sourcing ingredients, cooking, mending and gardening; or hobbies, or spending time with your family.
If you’re looking for well-paid part-time roles, try approaching small but growing companies that need your expertise but might not be able to afford you full-time. Or try specialist part-time-recruitment sites like Capability Jane and Timewise Jobs.
(Obviously, this decision is one only you can make, after taking into account whether you can afford to do so now and in the future. See a financial adviser or the Citizens Advice Bureau if you are unsure how this action would affect your current and future finances, including your pension).
Change your job to reduce your commute
Reduce your carbon footprint and regain quality time by changing your job to one closer to home. It’s a great answer to the “Why do you want to leave your current role?” question.
Fly less
Take fewer foreign trips
Foreign business travel, weekend breaks and family holidays all add up in terms of carbon emissions. Where possible, use virtual meetings, take the train, or book breaks closer to home.
Fly short-haul rather than long-haul, and fly direct
Shorter flights are more polluting per passenger mile than longer flights. That’s because takeoff and landing use the most fuel, and that cost is divided by fewer miles for short-haul flights. So why are they “better”?
The negatives of short-haul flights are outweighed by the fact that you travel a lot more miles on a long-haul flight, so overall your emissions are much higher. Long-haul flights also travel at higher levels of the atmosphere. Emissions at higher altitudes have a much worse effect than the same emissions created at lower altitudes.
A long-haul flight that also involves multiple changes is the worst of all because you have multiple take-offs and landings as well as high-altitude emissions. So if you must fly long-haul, fly direct.
Don’t fly at all – stay local, drive electric or take the train
Flying, whether short or long-haul, generates a very high amount of emissions. For example, a round trip from the UK to Bangkok in economy class emits around 1.4 tonnes of CO2 per passenger (2.7 tonnes including non-CO2 impacts). In comparison, home electricity emits an average of 1.2 tonnes of CO2 annually, and the average annual emissions from driving in the UK are 2.1 tonnes. (Source: Aviation Environment Foundation [3]).
The greenest choice is simply not to fly at all, choosing rail or road instead. Electric cars can be recharged en route, and across Europe night-train (sleeper) services are being re-started by rail operators Nightjet, Snälltåget, and Midnight Trains.
Dedicated no-fly travel company Byway offers travel and accommodation packages using trains, bikes, buses and ferries, while Trailfinders has a no-fly section (although you should avoid the cruises, as cruise ships are not a sustainable option[4] either).
Friends of the Earth has a great section on no-fly holiday ideas, covering house swaps, conservation work, snorkelling, gardens, museums, festivals, walking, city breaks and more.
Offset your carbon emissions from flying
It’s best not to fly at all, but if you can’t avoid it, you could offset the effect of the emissions generated. Offsetting usually means giving money to projects that aim to offset the damage by capturing carbon or reducing emissions elsewhere.
It’s not perfect, but it’s better than not doing it, and it encourages you to price in the wider costs of flying.
The UN Climate Convention maintains a list of projects around the world which you can filter by cost, project type, location, benefits, industry, and how long they’ve been running. This should help you avoid contributing to low-impact projects, or projects that accidentally do more harm than good.
To calculate how much carbon you need to offset, you can use the UN’s carbon offset calculator. You can use this to calculate your whole impact including household energy use, transport and lifestyle, or (by doing it once, writing down your emissions and doing it a second time with the flight included) you can use it to just calculate the carbon cost of one flight.
Learn about the costs of journeys by train and air
Check out this DW Akademie article for an interesting analysis of the costs of train and air journeys in terms of money, time, and environmental impact.
Never do “mileage runs”
Never, ever, take extra flights (mileage runs) just to preserve your status level with an airline. It’s disgusting to think that airlines promote such wasteful behaviour and that people actually do it. Call the airline instead and see if they’ll negotiate on the fee you pay to preserve your status. If they won’t, switch to a different airline next year.
Lobby for better transport policies
Pile on the pressure to improve public transport
Many villages and housing estates have no public transport, or buses that run so infrequently you can’t rely on them for work, school, or shopping.
If your area has bad public transport links, write an article for your village magazine/Facebook page and encourage everyone to write to your bus company, local council and political representative about it. Include the appropriate email addresses to make it as easy as possible.
Bear in mind that bus subsidies have been absolutely decimated in recent years, turning previously profitable routes into loss-makers, so your political representative is likely to be the most appropriate target.
Lobby for cycle routes as part of every new development
Write to your local council and political representative to demand that new developments are only given the go-ahead if they add to the sustainability of the local transport system, e.g. a cycle route from the development to the centre of town.
Read more about building cycle routes as part of new developments
Lobby for a sustainable transport policy
Write to your political representative about their public transport policy. Electric and (eventually) hydrogen-powered vehicles are better for the environment than petrol and diesel, but they still encourage individual travel and lead to microplastic pollution from tyre wear. The long-term solution has to be a mass public transport system that’s fit for the future.
Read more about lobbying for a sustainable transport policy
Lobby for a frequent flyer tax
A frequent flyer tax (or levy) is an additional tax on people who take a lot of flights (or the businesses that make them take the flights), making them more expensive and therefore discouraging unnecessary travel. Just 15% of people are responsible for 70% of UK flights [5], so a frequent flyer levy could significantly reduce emissions. Lobby your political representative to introduce a frequent flyer tax.
Read more about frequent flyer taxes and what to write to your MP
Make airlines publish the environmental impact of each flight so we can make better choices
Lobby airlines and train companies to publish the environmental impact of each journey at the time of purchase. Lobby your political representative as well. In the meantime, use Skyscanner and Google Flights to compare the CO2 costs of different flights before you buy.
For more ways to influence companies, politicians and people you know, see our Influence page.
Change what you eat
Reduce your food miles
Food miles are the distance your food travels, from where it’s produced to your plate. Every mile travelled increases the greenhouse gases emitted.
It’s better for the environment if you eat plant-based food, no matter how far it’s travelled[2]. But when choosing between similar foods, buy the one that’s grown and processed as close as possible to your home, without the aid of a heated greenhouse. For example, if you live in the UK, tomatoes grown outdoors in Spain are more environmentally friendly than tomatoes grown in South America, and likely to be better than tomatoes grown in heated greenhouses in the UK in winter.
Read more about reducing your food miles
But even better…
Eat seasonally
Eating seasonally simply means eating fruit and vegetables that would normally grow in your area at that time of year, so fewer emissions are generated in growing and transporting your food to you. For example, in autumn and winter, you could fill up on satisfying comfort food like roasted root vegetables, rather than choosing raw summer vegetables that have been grown in industrial greenhouses or flown in.
If you’re not sure what’s in season and need inspiration, check out Riverford’s seasonal ranges or Abel & Cole’s seasonal veg box (see what’s in the box, then buy it from your local shop if that suits your budget better).
Read more about eating seasonally
[1] “Net emission reductions from electric cars and heat pumps in 59 world regions over time”. Knobloch et al, 2020. Nat Sustain 3, 437–447 (2020) Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0488-7
and
The Guardian. 2020. Electric cars produce less CO2 than petrol vehicles, study confirms. [online] Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/23/electric-cars-produce-less-co2-than-petrol-vehicles-study-confirms> [Accessed 21 June 2021].
[2] Poore, J. and Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 360(6392), pp.987-992.
[3]The Aviation Environment Federation, 2022. What can I do as a leisure traveller?. Available at: <https://www.aef.org.uk/action/as-a-traveller/> [Accessed 29 August 2022].
[4] Friends of the Earth, 2022. Cruise Ships’ Environmental Impact. Available at: <https://foe.org/blog/cruise-ships-environmental-impact/> [Accessed 29 August 2022].
[5] Full Fact. 2016. Do 15% of people take 70% of flights?. [online] Available at: <https://fullfact.org/economy/do-15-people-take-70-flights/> [Accessed 7 February 2021].
Image credits:
Motorway at sunset – photo by Aleksandr Popov on Unsplash
Sunrise in the countryside – photo by Jan Huber on Unsplash
Men walking down a pleasant city street – photo by Yu on Unsplash
Car tyres – photo by Goh Rhy Yan on Unsplash
Electric car charging in the street – photo by Alexander Zahn on Unsplash
Home office – photo by Dell on Unsplash
Plane – photo by Emanuel on Unsplash
Bus shelter – photo by Marius Matuschzik on Unsplash
Apples and oranges on supermarket shelves – photo by Gemma on Unsplash