How green is your daily journey?

[upsidedown]

993g for the train part.
400g for the cycling part.

If i were to do it in the car it would be 10.3 kg !!

 

[Matty]

Your reasons for cycling are more a question for this thread...

Good shout.

 

[Davywalnuts]

I have never got a drive through take-away burger etc on a bicycle.

Have you not gone through a drive thru on your bike? My local Mc'Ds wont serve after 11pm at the drive thru if on foot, so when am drunk and they wont serve me, I just change and get on the bike and not a problem! :?:

 

[StuartG]

Its only northern cyclists that are the problem. Down here in the soft south relatively few of us eat coal for breakfast so our Co2 (and methane) emissions are organic rather than fossil fuelled.

Cycling recycles carbon rather than introducing new stuff unlike the internal combustion engine. So we are not really adding to the problem. Quite the opposite. No need to give up breathing, yet.

 

[HJ]

Its only northern cyclists that are the problem. Down here in the soft south relatively few of us eat coal for breakfast so our Co2 (and methane) emissions are organic rather than fossil fuelled.

Cycling recycles carbon rather than introducing new stuff unlike the internal combustion engine. So we are not really adding to the problem. Quite the opposite. No need to give up breathing, yet.

The carbon foot print of your feeding habits, is to do with the distance your food travels to get to your plate, much of which involves the internal combustion engine...

Then again the calculator doesn't allow of the food I get from the allotment which has a zero fossil carbon footprint!

 

[ColinJ]

My journey is as green as it can get - I walk upstairs after breakfast and switch on the computer in my attic bedroom/office!

 

[Cab]

Then again the calculator doesn't allow of the food I get from the allotment which has a zero fossil carbon footprint!

And as for many of us with allotments thats a big chunk of the calories we take in, thats a most valid point.

Its kind of... I dunno, I don't especially care how much carbon dioxide a website says I produce cycling, as I know that with the way we eat its so near to being zero (when calculated as an increase above what I'd be producing anyway) as makes no odds.

Remember too that because we maintain a higher level of fitness through cycling than the average motorist, we're also more efficient when we're not cycling. We're not carrying extra fat and body mass that has to be maintained through eating more doughnuts. We're not clogging up hospital beds with coronaries brought on through sitting in traffic for years and never getting our hearts pumping.

A simpler way of looking at this is whether what you're doing is 'good', 'not awful', or 'awful'. To commute on foot or bike is good, to commute by train isn't dreadful, to do so by car puts you at a disadvantage (morally, ethically and physiologically). Ain't that complicated.

 

[Little_McKay]

Wow!

Cycling = 788g
Car = 12kg

We really are doing our bit, eh? Think I'll defo be keeping this cycling thing up! lol

 

[Pedal Post]

Wow!

Cycling = 788g
Car = 12kg

We really are doing our bit, eh? Think I'll defo be keeping this cycling thing up! lol

I am pleased that this is making an impact!

 

[dan_bo]

8.5 Kg in the car (I'm assuming it doesn't know theat the M60 is a car park in the mornings)

<500g on the bike


unfortunately I only bike it 2-4 times a week 'cos it's that kind of job

 

[davidg]

234g on bike...

would be 126g on tube!!!

 

[WimbledonCyclist]

I never trust these calculators. In this case, I couldn't even see the site - it tells me I'm running Explorer 6 and I need to upgrade first. That in itself would produce CO2 (think of all the computers powering the internet) ... and besides, I cannot install such stuff on my office computer.

The thing is, the alternative for my bike commute is the London Underground. But my tube journey has no inoticeable incremental effect on power consumption of the tube train, and will not lead to the production of extra trains either: TfL will not in a million years (well, not in the next couple of years in any case) run extra trains to accommodate more passengers on the Northern Line. So a tube-generated CO2 emission figure, allocated to me based on my 'share' of overall CO2-production by the Northern Line would be misleading.

CO2 emissions for such forms of transport are not linear, but stepped, and cannot be allocated to individual travellers in a meaningful way that gives the individual traveller a choice of CO2-impact reducing behaviour. Methinks.

 

[WimbledonCyclist]

As an added thought: if it's true that regular cyclists stay healthier and alive for a few more years than non-cyclists, then that needs to be reflected in the calculation as well. "We" green cyclists will continue to lead lives on this planet for longer than our car-driving and train-travelling brothers and sisters, who will kick the bucket before we do. "We" will thus continue to belt CO2 into the air for longer - bad on us.

Now this could all be compensated for if rumours about time in the bicycle saddle resulting in reduced fertility for men were true, but I understand that there is little substance to that fertility-issue-rumour. As a group, we might have compensated for our longer lives by having fewer children otherwise ...

 

[HJ]

Now this could all be compensated for if rumours about time in the bicycle saddle resulting in reduced fertility for men were true, but I understand that there is little substance to that fertility-issue-rumour. As a group, we might have compensated for our longer lives by having fewer children otherwise ...

There is very little evidence to support the reduced fertility rumour, you only have to look at the popularity of cycling in the first half of the last century, if it were true then most of us wouldn't be here now!

 

[jonesy]

...

CO2 emissions for such forms of transport are not linear, but stepped, and cannot be allocated to individual travellers in a meaningful way that gives the individual traveller a choice of CO2-impact reducing behaviour. Methinks.

I quite agree. There is a vast difference between average emissions per passenger km and marginal emissions per p-km. Unfortunately CO2 calculators like the one on Transport Direct confuse the two. If you use average emissions as the basis for choosing mode on an individual journey, you end up doing perverse things like concluding you shouldn't take public transport off-peak and should drive instead, which means more CO2 is emitted, instead of using the spare capacity on a vehicle that was already going to travel.