Travelers provide great emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants that affect the climate and your health. By thinking about how you travel, you have great opportunities to reduce emissions.
Think about this
Driving a smaller car and flying less frequently are two very effective ways to reduce emissions.
Choose to walk or take a bike, train or bus before a car. Or interact with others in the car.
Some journeys can be avoided by shopping on the internet, meeting online, planning your journeys more accurately and doing several cases during the same journey.
Of course, much of our car driving is difficult to avoid. Then you can reduce emissions by having a fuel-efficient car that may also run on biofuels. Electric cars or so-called charging hybrids, which can be powered by both electricity and liquid fuel, are also becoming increasingly realistic alternatives.
You can influence how much emissions you cause
We need to be able to move with vehicles both everyday and on longer journeys. It gives us experiences and a richer and more content life. You can still affect how much greenhouse gases and exhaust you emit, mainly by driving a smaller car and not flying as much.
Short trips
What for most people would have the greatest impact on the climate is if we travel less by car. Almost 80 percent of the distance we travel domestically is by car.
In everyday life, you can travel more sustainably by choosing a bike, bus or train before the car. Often there are more benefits to walking and cycling – it is cheaper and gives us exercise at the same time. If the distance is short, it often goes faster. Many of us get into the car of old habit, but there can sometimes be a lot to gain from trying other ways to get to work.
If the car is the smoothest means of transport for the job, traveling with a colleague or neighbor is an environmentally friendly alternative.
A little longer trips
If you are going away over the weekend or on holiday in the country, it is better for the environment to go by train or bus instead of driving. Here, of course, reason must be controlled – sometimes it is fully justified to choose the car, for example, if you are many in the car or when you are going to places where reasonable alternatives are lacking. But keep in mind that the cost of driving a car is significantly higher than just the fuel cost, such as the depreciation and wear and tear costs, service and tires.
Long trips
Flying affects the climate most per kilometer you travel, about as much as when driving alone in a regular car. Engines also emit gases other than carbon dioxide, including water vapor and nitrogen oxides. When these gases are emitted from high altitude aircraft, they affect the climate negatively, about as much as the carbon dioxide. But if you are on a longer trip, there is usually no alternative but to fly. If you are traveling by air, it is better from a climate point of view to stay away for a longer time than to make more shorter trips.
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