10 ways to Tackle & Trim your Transport Emissions – From Juliet at The Great Eco Journey

Every year, kiwis drive a collective 49 billion kilometres – that’s halfway to the sun!   Transport emissions are probably the single, biggest thing you can look at when it comes to sustainability – they make up more than 35% of our household carbon emissions.  That’s more than our power, water and waste combined!  So what can we do about it?  Well, the great news is that now, there are more options than ever for those who are ready and willing to tackle (or perhaps just ‘trim’) their transport emissions.  Don’t feel like you need to do it all.  Small changes can add up to make a big difference!  Read on for ten ways to reduce your transportation footprint.

1.  Maintaining your vehicle

Yes, you read that right!  Keeping your vehicle in good nick can actually reduce your emissions.  Things like regular servicing, replacing worn-out components, using the correct oil and the correct grade of petrol, all help your car run more efficiently.  A properly maintained vehicle can improve your petrol mileage and fuel economy by between 10-20%

2.  Under pressure

All tyres gradually lose air.  By checking the pressure every month you can make your car run more efficiently, your tyres will last longer, and you will also make your car safer.  You can find tips for pumping up your tyres and getting the right pressure at GenLess.

3.  Drive smart

Combine errands to make fewer trips. Remove excess weight from your car (including things like the roof and bike racks when you don’t need them). Avoid excessive accelerating or braking.  While you’re at it, avoid traffic!  You’ll cut your emissions and be happier for it.

4.  Say no to short car trips

In New Zealand, car trips of two kilometres or less, such as popping to the dairy, make up nearly one-third of our drives.  That’s an average of 12 short car trips per household per week!  How about committing to cutting down the short car trips?  Use your legs, your bike, your scooter.  You could even join, or set up a walking school bus.

5.  Working from home

If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it’s that a lot of work does not need to be done from the office.  We’ve spent months seeing first-hand that plenty of work can be done from the comfort of our own homes.  If we continue to make working from home a habit, this could be great news for the planet.  In fact, according to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, if one in five Kiwis opt to work from home just once a week, we’d prevent 84,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere each year. That’s equivalent to taking 35,000 cars off the road!

6.  Keep on zooming

If we also were to stick with the video conferencing which was made mainstream in 2020-21, we’d save a huge amount of emissions from business flights between our major cities.

7.  Consider electric

Hybrid and electric cars, scooters and bikes use electricity as fuel, generating much fewer emissions than their gas-guzzling counterparts. Plus, if charged with clean electricity from renewable sources (which approximately 80% of NZ’s electricity currently is), electric cars produce zero CO2.

8.  Car-sharing

If you don’t need a car much, but when you do need one, you really need one, then car-sharing could be an option for you!  Companies like Cityhop, Zilch and Mevo are making day-to-day car-sharing a reality.  Basically, you join up, and then when you need a car, you use an app to find the closest one to you.  You can rent it by the hour (from $11), day (from $66) or week (from $149).  A great way to avoid car ownership, but have wheels when you need them.  There is also a scheme being trialled by Mercury Energy and Snap rentals called ‘Drive‘ where you can hire an electric car by the month.

9.  Public transport

Could you leave your car at home once a week and use public transport instead?  Every bit helps.

10.  Slow travel

Lowering your transportation footprint doesn’t meet you can’t travel!  But how about embracing slow travel?  Slow travel doesn’t mean being that annoying person who drives 10km under the speed limit!  It means not trying to turn your two week holiday into a Contiki Tour; making as many stops as possible, in as little time as possible.  It means taking your time to make connections while respecting culture, communities and the environment.  It means really seeing a place, rather than just passing through and taking a selfie.  It means avoiding flying when possible, by opting for methods like trains and buses.  When you do fly, there are a few things you can do to lower the impact; flying direct, flying economy class, offsetting your emissions and opting for a more sustainable airline (you can find a list of sustainable airlines here – Air New Zealand is sitting at #13).  You can also take your keep cup, drink bottle and other reusables, so you don’t have to use their disposable ones.

Earlier this year, our family decided to trial being a one-car-family.  We agreed to give it a month, suspecting that between kindy and school drop-offs and pickups, work, playdates, rainy days, weekend sports, car seats, after-school activities and general life, we would surely need to buy a second car once the trial was up.  Eight months down the track we remain a one-car family, and the things that we thought would be the biggest challenges have actually been the most rewarding.  We’ve joined the walking school bus, we bike and walk more often, we have more family time, my husband loves biking to work and his fitness has improved, we use some public transport, grandparents help out from time to time and we save a significant amount of money.

Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had our moments.   Like the time we got the bus to football and then realised we had forgotten the football boots!  Or when we got stuck in torrential rain while trying to carry a science-fair project home from school.  These have become known in our family as ‘uber moments’, and there have been few enough of them to not really make a dent in our savings.

To be honest, I wish we’d done this years ago, but there just always seemed to be so many obstacles.  If there is one thing I’ve learnt since March, it’s that sometimes the obstacles in our mind are just that, in our mind!  Who would have thought that something we had kept in the ‘too hard basket’ for so long, would end up being one of the best changes we’ve made on our sustainability journey?

Are you ready to tackle, or trim your transport emissions?

Written by Juliet from The Great Eco Journey