Looking after the environment for future generations
27/09/2010

Looking after the environment for future generationsBritain suffers from the most widespread levels of dangerous traffic fumes in Europe, posing a serious risk to health. At the same time, 91% of car commuting is single occupancy. The link is very clear. And indeed, if the UK's average car occupancy increased to just two, CO2 emissions would drop by 9 million tonnes.

Fortunately, more and more people are starting to realise that filling our roads with single occupancy cars is entirely unsustainable. Around seven in every ten people who car-share are motivated (completely or in part) by its environmental impact - because just by sharing with one other person who's going your way, you halve the CO2 emissions of that journey as you leave one car at home.

"Car-sharing has to be a no-brainer," Claire in Forest of Dean told us. "Every one of us has a duty to reduce our carbon footprint." Jamie in Crawley agreed, describing it as a "fantastic way to look after the environment for our future generations."

There are over 1.4 billion (yes, you read that right!) annual journey miles registered for sharing on the Liftshare network. We estimate that this equates to about 320 million miles shared each year by our members, saving over 105,000 tonnes of CO2 annually, assuming each journey is with just one other person.

That's one serious environmental impact, for just a small change in travel behaviour - a change which brings numerous other benefits along with it. Several of these benefits have been discussed in recent blogs, but the two biggest are still to come... watch this space!

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