Costs of Travel

This week it has been made official at Otago Polytechnic, that each of our schools and service areas will be taxed for air travel.  This means every time a staff member travels, the school has to pay an additional fee equal to the Carbon Offset value calculated on the Carbon Zero website. This ‘tax’ will be charged internally and used to fund sustainability projects within OP.

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This is a significant step for Otago Polytechnic in our quest to reduce its carbon footprint by encouraging staff to reduce non essential air travel, or to come up with alternatives. 

A recent issue of Green Ideas magazine (Feb-March 2014) did a comparison on the ecological impact of air travel vs personal car and train transport. It clearly shows for an equivalent trip, the amount of CO2 produced by a plane per passenger is more than for a car, and way more than for a train. For a trip from the same start point to the same destination this article came up with these figures of CO2 emissions:

• 166kg CO2 per passenger for plane
• 109kg CO2 per car with 1 passenger
• 36kg CO2 per passenger on a train.  

This indicates that a car with 4 passengers is actually the greenest option at approximately 28kg CO2 per passenger.  Of course make and model of plane and car will have some variation on these results but it still remains clear that the cost of flying on the environment is high.  

These figures indicate that it is timely for us all to evaluate our travel options. So, as a student or an employee in a veterinary clinic how does this relate to you? 

• If you are travelling to block course in the same island - is it better to drive than fly?  Could you pick up fellow classmates on the drive and share the carbon (and other) costs?  
• If you are travelling to a conference - is there an economical/time option to drive or take the train rather than fly?
• In your day to day work environment, could your business set up a competition to reduce the car trips/mileage to and from work by staff?  Car pooling, taking an electric powered bus or riding a push bike are all great forms of alternative transport.  Make it competitive and have prizes!
• If you are in a rural practice where the staff travel to farms using vehicles, this is an opportunity to look at energy efficient vehicles when the fleet needs to be replaced. In addition to this, look at reducing mileage travelled by setting up a more efficient booking and call system.   
• On a personal side, short car journeys are way more fuel inefficient and are very costly on the environment as we make lots of these trips.  Evaluate the trips you make in the car over a week or 2 and then look at ways to reduce them.  Could you combine trips so do more in one trip, could you walk a short distance (which also has the benefit of adding exercise)?  Set yourself a personal challenge and see how much you are able to accomplish.

My personal reflection: I have been considering the flights I take to Dunedin each year for work. Over the years I have reduced the number of times I travel to Dunedin, which is a plus.  Now I am thinking whether it would be better to drive: If I fly, it takes me about 3 hours (I have to leave home 1 hour before the flight leaves, the flight takes about 1 hour, then it takes about an hour to get off the plane, get a bag/or rental car and drive into Dunedin city). Driving to Dunedin takes about 4.5 hours so a little longer than flying but still not too bad. The financial costs are significant too, aside from the airfare, there is the transport to and from the airport which can be costly in some cases. If I shared transport with my CHCH colleagues who are often travelling down at the same time, we could reduce the environmental impact, and reduce costs as well, all for a slightly increased travel time.  

Of course what I have covered here is minimal.  I look forward to sharing more ideas on reducing your environmental impact through travel!

Have a great week.