July 2023 - results
Sustainable Transport: Reducing emissions

June / July Goal: Reduce carbon emissions across driving, flying and public transport.

How: Avoid driving, swap to lower carbon options and offsetting where we haven't changed the outcome.

Verdict: Poor! Our km of driving looks on par with last year, not a noticeable reduction yet, planning for more flights over the year which is ratcheting up our emissions. More use of public transport but we need to try harder!

July Monthly

Tackling transport - our June / July theme

Avoid the drive

See where we can avoid the need for car trips altogether, walk or cycle

Swap the source

Swap cars for public transport. Investigate swapping the ICE for an EV.

Offset the rest

Purchase offsets for any major emissions trips - fligths and big road trips.

Results - how did we go?

Goal #1 - Avoid the drive

Recap: See where we can avoid driving altogether. Stay home, walk, or cycle.

Progress update: While the odometer doesn't show a significant reduction in driving kilometers compared to normal, we've actively tried to avoid unnecessary trips. We already walked to nearby places like coffee shops, the local IGA, pharmacy, and bakery, so that habit continued.

Achievements:

Biking: We took out our bicycles from the garage and started using them for short trips. Thanks to Pop for helping us pump up the tires!
Market trips: We successfully cycled to Karrinyup and discovered that we can also cycle to the markets for our Sunday fruit and veg shop. The uphill ride back can be challenging, but the effort is worth it!

Challenges:

Time constraints: Avoiding driving sometimes requires more time for walking or cycling, which can be a challenge in our busy schedules.
Distance limitations: While we can walk or cycle to nearby places, longer distances may become a constraint for avoiding driving and the kids still get pretty knackered if we go too far.

Overall, we're making progress and finding ways to incorporate more walking and cycling into our daily routines. Over time the kid's stamina for riding will pick up along with our distances and we'll need to get some bag racks on the bikes to make shopping and longer trips easier.

Goal #2 - Swap the source

Recap: a) Swap the car trips for lower emissions transport options.

b) Investigate an EV purchase.

Progress #2 a - swapping driving for lower emissions transport

Goal 1 looked at avoiding emissions altogether, while this goal looked at swapping the source - from driving to public transport or carpooling. So carpooling didn't really happen (unless you count Uber - and I don't, it might call itself rideshare but it's really just networked transportation). I have been very consistent at the two weekdays of public transport, probably only driving into the city twice on my designated public transport days - once when I was ferrying in a large amount of drycleaning and the second when I had kid pickup to do out of the ordinary on a Friday. That's not bad for 24 weeks in the job.

As for the weekends, mainly we've driven or else walked / rode bikes so there hasn't been too much getting out and about on the trains or buses. The frequency and hence convenience of public transport is a little less come the weekend, although the bike riding (see Goal 1) has picked up significantly in recent times and is a habit we hope to do more of.

Goal #3 - What you can't reduce, offset

Our plan is to steadily reduce our emissions, year by year, to reach our goal of netzero. In most areas we can make small or big changes that get us towards that goal. However, there are a few areas that are hard to abate at a societal level (like aviation and global shipping) and hard to abate at a personal level (due to affordability or just from the current scale of impact on our lifestyle).

Changing from a high emitting vehicle to an EV is a significant cost for our family and not one we took lightly. The kids haven't been on a plane since a domestic flight when they were toddlers. I've been on one flight since pre-Covid days, we're hardly jetsetters. The weeks we're going to spend together #vanlife in Tasmania later this year are totally going to be worth the carbon offset.

For our Tas and my work trip, we've bought carbon offsets via Qantas and bought carbon offsets direct from Carbon Neutral, for avoided deforestation of rainforest, via the Madre de Dios Project – Amazon Rainforest Peru.

It's a super easy process and there are a number of projects to choose from. To offset 3 tonnes cost us $47.85. After all the investigation into palm oil the rainforest protection - and protecting our global weather patterns - felt important to me.