Normally, when you think of travel, you are hard pressed to think or associate it with “sustainability” or “green”. Instead, you’d probably think big flying machine in the sky spraying CO2 and other harmful greenhouse gases into the ozone layer and on everything it comes across. Granted, planes do leave behind a significant carbon footprint. It presently accounts for four to nine per cent of the total climate change impact of human activity. However, there are things that can be done to travel just a bit more sustainably. Ideally, it would be best for no one to travel with planes AT ALL. But, since that is neither realistic nor possible at this time, there are ways in which we can reduce our carbon footprint when travelling, and be a bit more ecofriendly.
Some of these tips below individually may seem miniscule and inconsequential, but they do have a significance in aggregate:
- Use a different means of transportation when possible. Trains and buses, for example are much more energy efficient than planes, especially when the journey is a regional one. Cars can even be more energy efficient than planes, especially with more than one passenger.
- Try to combine flights. For example instead of flying to, say France in the first week of July and again, in the last week of July, combine the activities of two trips into one.
- Try to pack as light as you possibly can, when the plane is lighter, it means less fuel is burned.
- Fly in economy class. You are saving money doing this, while simultaneously contributing to saving the planet. More people per plane actually means fewer carbon emissions.
- As far as it is possible for you to, fly using the most direct routes with the least number of stop overs. This is because the take-off and landing of the plane takes the most energy. So less of that means less energy expended.
- Fly during the day time. Sounds strange, I know. But studies have shown that flights at night take more energy than daytime flights.
- Last, but not least, purchase carbon offsets if the airline that you can fly with offer that program. Carbon offsets mean that there would be a reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases made in order to compensate for or to offset an emission made elsewhere.
So, there you go. A few ways you can make flying more sustainable, if you really have to fly. Another thing that’s worth noting for businesses that travel often for meetings is that, you should consider having video calls or video conferences e.g via Skype. This will save money and energy.
Furthermore, to reduce your carbon footprint even more, make your business meetings completely paperless by skipping out on using paper forms and using paperless business forms instead. SignTech provides paperless business solutions, to make that transition easy for you.
To conclude, fly as energy efficient as possible, and go paperless with Signtech!
SignTech Forms is an innovative paperless platform that converts existing forms and documents into paperless forms that can be completed on mobile devices and electronically signed seamlessly (with full data integration). For more information visit www.signtechforms.com or email expert@signtechforms.com
