How large is your holiday footprint?

When it comes to carbon footprints, out achilles heel seems to be our love affair with tourism.

So, what exactly is an eco footprint?

Everything works according to checks and balances, and the Earth is no different. An eco footprint is the size of the mark left by our activity. Think of it like this: everything we do takes energy and produces waste… it leaves a mark. The amount of a mark left is the size of our eco footprint (you may have also hear the expression carbon footprint, which works in a similar way).

The phrase first came into existence in the 1970s because - for the first time – scientists recognised that our mark (our footprint) had crossed the sustainability barrier. What does this mean? If the Earth’s resources were a bank balance, the period marked the time at which we made the transition from living on interest to living from the capital. And, as everyone knows, you can only live off non-renewable capital for so long before it disappears.

When it comes to our eco footprints, the ones that we create from our travel and tourism habits are quite large ones.

How big exactly? Well, a return transatlantic flight will create roughly 1.3 tonnes of CO2 per passenger. To put this in perspective, an average home in the UK will use around five tonnes of CO2 all year.

Two wings bad?

So, is it time to turn our back on any travel involving aeroplanes? Some people would say ‘yes’. And when, taken in context, you see that a train journey uses on average one eighth of the carbon than what is used for a flight - it might not seem that radical a suggestion.

But, while there are many destinations in the UK, which are equal to any found globally, and Eurostar has opened up continental Europe as never before, vowing to never take a flight ever again is a sacrifice that some people find to hard to make.

So, what else can the eco-conscious traveller do to minimise the size of his or her eco footprint?

To tax or not to tax?

An obvious first way to combat the rise of CO2 pollution is to add a tax to flight costs. Obvious, maybe, but some would also say ‘ineffective’. Cars have – over the last number of years - been subject to increasing levels of tax but our streets are still congested.

Another suggestion is to introduce carbon trading. Instead of simply adding to the cost of an airline ticket (which would theoretically discourage people from flying) this would (or should) mean that all passengers are responsible for directly paying for the pollution they cause by flying, and that the airlines become more efficient.

It would work like this: every airline would have an allotment of carbon waste that they are ‘allowed’ to produce. To continue large scale flying and expanding their routes, it would be in the airlines best interests to do everything in their capacity to lower their carbon output - if they wanted to expand beyond their limits (their carbon allowance), they would have to trade with industries who have a surplus. Rather than just add extra cost to tickets, there would be a real impetus on the industry to ‘clean up’.

It seems to be a policy generally welcomed by the airline industry. Stelios Haji-Ioannou, for example, the larger-than-life founder of easyJet backs the idea: “At easyJet there is a policy: we will adopt an emissions trading scheme when the Government backs it.”

A voluntary example of something similar (from a passenger’s perspective) can be found on the British Airways website. When booking flights, passengers are given the option of offsetting the carbon produce of their flights by sponsoring an energy efficiency schemes elsewhere. As the theory goes, there is currently no eco-friendly options for air fuel – money invested in initiatives on the ground go a lot further.

Take the example of a return flight to Madrid. By investing £13.30 in sustainable energy projects (such as the distribution of energy efficient lamps) passengers can offset the impact of their flight. An investment of £13.30 as a direct fuel tax, however, would have very little impact.

The view from Westminster

Our representatives in parliament have also had the subject of our travel eco footprint on their minds. In fact, the government has pledged to reduce the amount of carbon emissions produced by their official flights in a bid to ‘do their bit’.

The initiative will be administered by a Civil Service Travel Group who will work towards developing best practice policies for government as a whole.

It has also backed the work of The Travel Foundation, a UK travel industry body set up create new carbon emission reduction programmes to minimise the carbon footprint of British holidaymakers.

At the time of its launch, the then Environment Minister, Elliot Morley, commented: "I very warmly welcome the Travel Foundation's initiative, which builds on some excellent sustainability work they have been doing in resorts overseas. In the past, tourists have not fully recognised the environmental damage they can cause, particularly when travelling abroad. By donating to the Travel Foundation, and also by offsetting their flights, they can return something to benefit the environment.

"With growing prosperity, we need and want to travel more. Our job is to enable people to travel whilst at the same time meeting our environmental obligations; individuals can play their part by offsetting their air flights, from which emissions are rising."

The message is clear; the price of your airline ticket doesn’t reflect the true cost of flying, but it’s in your power to help redress this balance. Sound advice for the eco-conscious traveller, I think.

You’ve read it. Now review it.

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