Organisations should pay more attention to their methods of transport, says Melissa Henry, Director of Communications at Sustrans, the UK’s leading sustainable transport charity.
Guest editorial – Sustrans
Green is the new black. Working for a charity that has been implementing practical solutions to reduce the environmental, energy and health impact of how we travel for over 30 years, it’s easy to be cynical about the dash to social responsibility demonstrated in corporate social responsibility reports.
But it would be wrong not to support the efforts of organisations to reduce carbon footprints given the extraordinarily small window of opportunity we have to slash these to virtually nothing. At the heart of achieving this, however, is tackling how we all travel, and yet bringing about sustainable transport does not feature in many non-financial reports. Given the scale of the problems confronting us, this is a gap that needs to be filled urgently.
In the UK, transport is the only sector where carbon emissions were higher in 2005 than in 1990, and is close to overtaking industry as the leading source of CO2 in the UK. Road transport is the dominant polluter, with private motor travel accounting for the lion’s share with nearly 43% of emissions, and freight for 26%.
Emissions are not the only consequence of transport. Fear of busy roads is the number one reason why parents don’t let their children cycle and walk as previous generations did – a decline in everyday physical activity that is damaging their health. Communities are divided by roads, reducing people’s access to their shops, schools, work, friends and family, and further increasing car dependency.
And where is all this traffic going? Sustrans’ detailed research into travel behaviour in several typical towns and cities, most recently Preston and Lancaster, reveals how cars are used mainly for local trips, and often in circumstances where walking, cycling or public transport offer a perfectly reasonable alternative. And while the majority of car use is for shopping and leisure purposes, the daily commute alone accounts for around a quarter of the car trips clogging up our towns and cities – and considerably more during peak hours.
The data shows many organisations that are reducing their emissions are not tackling one of the major contributors – the way that freight, customers and staff reach their premises. Some have taken steps towards reducing their transport emissions, but a focus on sustainable transport in CSR plans will only really make a difference if it is linked up with initiatives like internal workplace travel plans. We need more joined-up thinking to make this work. And there is a lot of work to be done. More effort is needed to both consolidate freight and reduce the amount of miles goods travel to market. More needs to be done to both enable and reward customers and staff, so they travel by foot, bike and public transport rather than private car. We also need a stronger focus on reducing commuting and business travel by using video conferencing, increasing home-working and promoting car-sharing.
I suspect achieving this with freight, customers and staff is considered too difficult. But we know from our own work that changing travel behaviour is not hard. Sustrans’ research shows that most people are concerned about traffic growth and support policies favouring public transport, walking and cycling above car travel. We know that around half of all local car trips could be replaced by sustainable travel modes using existing facilities, and the evidence shows that it is the lack of information about alternatives to the car that is the key barrier, not change itself.
All of our projects, from the National Cycle Network to Bike It, Safe Routes to Schools and TravelSmart are reducing car use. Wherever Sustrans works we see an increase in use of sustainable travel modes.
Any organisation, which genuinely believes in delivering corporate social responsibility, must be prepared to tackle the traffic that they generate. We will not cut our greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change unless we all face up to our responsibilities and not only reduce freight miles, but enable many millions of people to walk, cycle and use public transport much more.
Melissa Henry is Director of Communications at Sustrans, the UK’s leading sustainable transport charity. Melissa began her career in publishing, working with and managing teams to market and sell books in the UK and internationally. For the last 10 years she has worked in the not-for-profit sector and currently leads a dedicated and professional team at Sustrans that widely promotes the benefits of the charity’s work. Sustrans is the charity behind the 12,000-mile National Cycle Network, Safe Routes to Schools and many other pioneering projects enabling people to travel in ways that benefit their health and the environment. The charity recently won a public vote to secure the People’s £50 Million Lottery Giveaway with 42% of the vote.
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