Japanese trip in review

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Air travel (Sydney to Tokyo return): 18778km
Train (purple): 2632km
Bus (blue): 54km
Ferry (green): 333km
Cycling (red): 670km

One of the things we've been trying to do for awhile is live a more sustainable lifestyle, including lightening our carbon footprint (and we started well before the Al Gore movie!). We worked out the other day that we've been car-free for 4 years now. By this we mean not owning/leasing a car - we still need lifts from friends and family occasionally and there's no way we'd move house without a car. And yes, we will still be car-free after the baby is born! In Sydney we took public transport pretty much everywhere and in Alice Springs we cycled. And on this trip we did some more cycling.

A quick check of the facts reveals that any cycling we've done has been overshadowed by the amount of air travel we had to do to get to Japan. The quest to live sustainably continues!

Air: 2907kg of co2 generated*
Train: 32.6kg
Bus: 3.2kg
Ferry:20kg
Cycling:0

Other small gestures included bringing our own chopsticks to restaurants rather than using disposable chopsticks, much to the amusement of the restaurant owners.



and very quickly learning the phrase 'fukura orimasen' [sic] meaning 'no plastic bag, thank you'.

* Figures refer to the carbon we create from the consumption of old fossil fuel sources - not the carbon we create by farting etc. from consuming recent fuel sources such as plants and animals. Also embodied energy is not included. The figures vary according to what carbon emissions calculator you use, but this gives a general idea.