One of the biggest environmental factors in the workplace is, perhaps unsurprisingly, travel. I don’t know about you, but I don’t pay too much mind to my commute to and from the office each day, it’s just part of day-to-day life! That said, when the leadership team here at Indigo Swan looked into our own environmental assessment, they found that travel was one of our highest impacts.
Transport is the biggest contributor to the average UK carbon footprint, accounting for a little under 30% of national emissions. That works out to around 3.1 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) a year, per person. The main reason for this comes down to regular travel being taken in petrol or diesel cars, as around 68% of folks in Britain use cars as their primary source of commuting.
The government has announced that all new cars will be electric in the UK after 2035 as part of the Green Industrial Revolution, which is actually not that far away at this point. There have been a lot of mixed opinions on this announcement, but aside from the fact that electric vehicles (EV) produce no carbon emissions from a tailpipe, long term you will also save money compared to a petrol car. According to UK government data, the average cost of running a fully electric car is 9p per mile, and compared to petrol and diesel cars, you can save anywhere between 2p and 15p per mile.
If ‘range anxiety’ is a concern for you, it’s also worth considering having a charger installed at home. The average cost of installing an EV charging point is around £1,000 and can save you something in the region of £600. As electric vehicles become the norm over the next decade, we’ll see more accessible charging points out and about too, and hopefully all this will contribute to lowering our carbon emissions in the UK.
Of course, there are other ways you can reduce your carbon emissions from your daily commute if an EV isn’t for you. Walking and cycling both offer a cheap, zero-emission alternative, and with the added benefit of being good for you both physically and mentally – especially when the weather is good, and you can soak up some lovely sunshine!
If you live too far away from your place of work for that, there’s always public transport to consider. Trains are well on the way to being a very green way to get about, and many bus companies are moving in that same direction as well. FirstGroup, the largest bus operator in the country, pledged back in 2021 to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, but are aiming for earlier. We’ve seen this being applied here in Norfolk, and I would say I travel to and from work on an electric bus about 75% of the time now.
All in all, it’s well worth paying some attention to your commute and how you make your journey. The government have reported that there has actually been a 10% increase post-covid, from 2021 of emissions due to domestic transport, and with the world around us changing rapidly, and hopefully for the better, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.
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