Building on our previous Ecotourism blog which covered lowering your footprint once you arrive at your destination, in today’s blog we’re discussing how we get there and what we can do to lower our carbon footprint on the way. 

Let’s start with the obvious: the number one way you can reduce your travel footprint is to travel less frequently, to not travel as far, and to travel efficiently. This means travelling locally and/or to places you can reach with public transport, and to combine multiple destinations into one trip to avoid additional transport to and from home.

We do what we can as individuals to lower our own personal impact on our planet, but if we compare all transport options we can see that road travel (including personal cars, motorbikes and freight) is the largest contributor:

Now, in a scenario where you are travelling ~1000km, would it be better for your carbon footprint to drive (approx. 16 hours), or to fly (approx. 1 hour) to reach your destination?

In most cases like this, driving is the more environmentally friendly option. Despite road vehicles contributing the most towards overall transport emissions, a shorthaul flight is likely to have a higher individual carbon footprint than driving the same distance. If you’re travelling with companions in the car then the footprint per person drops considerably as well. The only time a flight might start to look more comparable would be if you’re driving a very inefficient car, and you’re going solo on a long journey.

For a different trip, let’s assume you’re going further afield, and need to take a flight (or two) to get there - what can we do about that?

The bad news is that flying remains highly energy-intensive, with few practical alternatives available to the industry to offer solutions to decarbonise. 

But, focusing on what’s within your power (asides from choosing not to fly), we’re going to remember that every little bit helps. This means:

1. Choosing the most direct route as take-off and landing are the most fuel-intensive parts of flying.

2. Booking with a more fuel-efficient aircraft or airline where you can. The Airbus A350 or Boeing 787 are about 20–25% more fuel efficient than older models.

3. Flying Economy class: more passengers equals a lower footprint for each individual. Premium and first-class seats can have up to 3 or 4 times the footprint of an economy seat.

4. Travelling light - every kilogram counts towards the aircraft’s ability to fly more efficiently.

5. Pairing your flight with more economical ground transit options on arrival, and perhaps some ecotourism activities during your stay.

What about carbon offsetting?

Carbon offsetting is essentially a donation towards an organisation or project that works to reduce or remove carbon emissions elsewhere to compensate for emissions from your flight, such as renewable energy projects, reforestation and carbon capture solutions. 

There are a few traps to avoid with carbon offsetting - the two big ones being that there are schemes that don’t deliver what they say they will, and that offsetting your flight’s carbon is not intended to allow you to travel more often. 

We can’t forget that even if you pay for your carbon offsetting, your flight will still emit carbon ‘now’, whereas any project aiming to sequester that carbon will likely take decades to come to fruition.

That being said, attempting to offset your carbon emissions is better than not trying to mitigate for them at all, and there are a range of verified, higher-quality programs you can look into, such as:

• Gold Standard

• Verified Carbon Standard (VCS)

• Climate Action Reserve

• Plan Vivo

You can also look at “insetting” — projects within the aviation supply chain (e.g. the development of Sustainable Aviation Fuel) rather than unrelated offset projects.

So in essence, carbon offsetting is useful and can give you peace of mind, but it’s a bridging solution that doesn’t address the actual issue, and should definitely not be used as a ‘hall pass’ to travel or fly more than necessary.