Total CO2 for Travel: 2881kg CO2
Part of our desire to live in an eco-village is to mitigate (and maybe even repair) the damage we are causing to the environment. Our trip has caused emissions that have gone into the atmosphere, that would otherwise not if we didn’t take this trip. These are primarily due to travel. We are not counting food, as we would be eating anyway, and our diet did not significantly change.
- Driving – 1237 kg CO2. According to our car’s specs we emit 0.198kg CO2 per km travelled. We drove 6249km.
- Flights – 1500 kg CO2. This was calculated using data from this website
- Boat – 144 kg CO2. Sources reporting on CO2 for boats vary from them being better to being worse than driving. Thus we assume, for convenience, they are the same as driving. Our boat trip from Barcelona – Livorno was 728km.
We are already taking steps to mitigate this imprint and ultimately the idea is that we will be one step closer living in an much more sustainable way, so its kind of like and investment. Spend Co2 now to have greater returns on reducing CO2 in the future.
How you can help
While we’re looking at CO2 as an investment, here’s where you can come in. If you like what we are doing and want to help us, you can pledge a CO2 donation to our cause. Our lifestyle choices have some CO2 impact, some more than others. You can pledge to take an action that reduces your CO2, or reduce, skip, or give up some heavy CO2 emmitting behaviours. If you dedicate that pledge to our trip, our CO2 impact goes down, and possibly even to the point where this trip has inspired enough action to become a Carbon Negative trip! Wow!
Three of the highest impact solution per amount of effort are around food, trees and transport.
Food
Our diets have a very strong impact on the cliamate. Below is how much CO2 we are responsible for each year based on diet.
- Meat eater 2,500 – 3,000 kg
- Vegetarian 1700 kg
- Vegan 1500 kg
So, going vegetarian for a year can save between 800 and 1300kg CO2. Having one meat-free day per week for a year will save 114 – 185kgCO2. Having a vegetarian meal instead of meat just once saves about 1kgCO2.
Trees
By the time a tree is 40 years old, it will have sequestered on average roughly 900kg of CO2. Thus planting just 4 trees will cover us for this journey – Nice, but its a pretty long term solution, and too late by many accounts. We’ve already put the CO2 out there, and the Earth shouldn’t have to wait 40 years to get rid of it…
While in Findhorn we visited Trees For Life, a charity dedicated to replanting the Caledonian Forest. Scottish highlands used to be covered in a rich and diverse forest, with many plants and animals. Humans need for wood over the millenia has resulted in what is now a very barren landscape. The forest cannot replenish itself as wild deer eat the saplings before they can become established.
We would like to offset our trip as soon as possible, within 5 years at least. I’ve been unable to find detailed data on how much carbon a tree sequesters over its whole life cycle. What I’m looking for is how much carbon would be absorbed in each year of the new trees life. If you know please let me know. According to this article older trees grow faster and sequester more carbon. So the majority of the 900kg in 40 years would happen towards the end of that 40 years. Failing other data, we’ll use an estimated average of 20kg per tree per year, and recovering the carbon in 5 years, which is roughly 100kg per tree. So we need to plant 29 trees to cover our carbon emissions for this journey. You can donate to Trees for Life here, each tree costs £5 to plant and be cared for.
Transport
Listed in order of eco-friendliness here’s how much CO2 your transport costs.
- Cycling: 0 g / km
- Bus & Train: 60 g / km
- Driving: check your vehicle spec for g CO2 / km.
- Plane: 300 g / km
Pledge
Any of the following, will balance our carbon budget for this trip:
- 26 people to commit to giving up meat one day a week for a year.
- 4 people to go veggie for a year.
- 2629 pledges to have a vegetarian meal instead of meat.
- 29 Trees to be planted
There are lots more ideas for how to reduce your footprint. We are requesting these pledges because they are the easiest to do with a clear (estimated) impact of carbon footprint. If you want to pledge, please write a comment on this post including how much carbon you are saving, and we’ll subtract from our total. These cannot be pledges you are already making, if you already are vegetarian for example.
Pledges Received so far…
- 5 x Give up meat once a week for a year (114kg each)
- Meg, Colin, John, Ursula, Ben
- 0 x Vegetarian for a year (800kg each)
- Who will be the first….?
- 150 x Vegetarian Meals (1kg each)
- Our Wedding meals
- 14 x Trees planted (100kg each)
- 10 Brian and Rach
- 4 Hugh and Caoimhe
Running Total = 761 kg CO2
Thank you to everyone who has pledged so far!!!
Brian and Rach
