Carbon Literacy Pledge - Elizabeth

You may have seen me standing at rain-soaked bus stops and train stations (by choice) in recent weeks, and this blog is all about why.

At the end of 2023 I undertook Carbon Literacy training on Carbon Literacy Action Day with over 50 of my GC colleagues. I found the carbon footprint exercise on myself enlightening, but not surprising that travel was a significant part of my footprint (and realised I should have done this earlier as an Eco Innovation specialist who supports businesses to adopt greener practices).

I live on the northern border of Greater Manchester, several miles from a train or tram stop, and work with clients in the Greater Manchester region, which makes travelling by car the easier and more convenient option. My individual pledge is to increase the use of public transport travel between my home and the city centre which should save over half a tonne of CO2e per year.

One of the aspects of the pledge I have benefited from is that it has motivated me to try the various routes I can take into the city centre. This is pretty useful for life in general – I have learnt a lot about the various quirks of the systems and how to use them (as well as what a gift Google Maps route planner is).

Despite the lack of train or tram, we do have a local bus route which goes straight into the city centre but of course the bus joins all the other traffic on the roads so is not brilliant at rush hour times. I had previously avoided this journey based on reports from others about the journey time.

If travelling outside of rush hour the bus is a great direct option, no parking hassle (or expense) involved and with bus tickets only £2 per journey it's extremely economical as well, particularly compared with parking in the city centre, not to mention fuel costs. I've also used the train a few times from a small local train station (so small and little used my local friends had never even heard of it).

My current favourite is a mixture of bus and tram, which works well when the timings connect and has entertainment value when, for example, the bus driver goes the wrong way (!) and is directed by passengers (including school children).

There are wellbeing benefits to carrying out my pledge too - I personally don’t enjoy the traffic and chaos of city centre driving and on my journeys I can do other things like catch up on emails or other reading that's difficult to fit into the day.

This stress reduction is balanced, of course, with the reliability ‘challenges’ of our public transport systems - fingers crossed this improves (we can hope) and that combined with the improvements in the weather, this should add up to some significant CO2e savings for my personal (and GC’s) footprint and I’m looking forward to reflecting on this at the end of the year.

Have you thought about what you can do to reduce your carbon footprint? Find out more about the #SmallChangesBigImpact campaign and the difference one person can make.