The Environmental impact of going on a round the world trip

The desire to travel and explore is innately human. It is a positive desire and moreover, is insuppressible. There are many other net benefits of travel. Whether you call it ‘reducing prejudice’, ‘raising cultural awareness’ or simply ‘enjoying interacting with people from other cultures’, travel increases our understanding of each other and makes the world a happier place…but what about the environmental impact of going on a round the world trip ?

We try to do our bit at Travel Nation and have had this section on our site since we started in 2001, long before the environment became really fashionable. In the office we re-use and re-cycle stuff where possible. We also make an annual donation to the World Land Trust who save rainforest to offset the carbon dioxide emitted by our share of the flights all of the staff here take each year and in the production of energy consumed by our office.

But what is the point of doing this if we sell air travel which everyone knows is hardly an environmentally friendly form of transport ?

Here are some of our thoughts :

• If you are taking several months off to travelling on a relatively modest budget, using public transport, you’ll find yourself buying only what you need and wasting very little, and even with the long-haul flying, there is every chance you will generate less CO2 than you do at home.
• Stopping at lots of countries as part of a single round the world itinerary will use up far fewer resources than making several individual long-haul trips to each destination from the UK would.
• The experience of going travelling can have a big impact on your outlook on life after you return. Lots of people report that the experience makes them less materialistic, so it follows that this change in perspective may reduce your future carbon footprint.
• Aircraft are becoming ever more fuel efficient (especially the new A380), and fierce competition in the airline industry means that ‘load factors’ (% of seats occupied on each flight) are now higher.
• If you didn’t go on a round the world trip, it is likely that you would use the money that you didn’t spend on flights on another product. Instead of a £1,500 round the world ticket, you might buy some wine imported from far flung lands or a big energy guzzling TV for example. Apart from our conviction that £ for £, money spent on ‘experiences’ provides far more happiness than money spent on ‘things’, the point is that air travel doesn’t have a monopoly on carbon emissions.

One way to reduce the carbon footprint of your trip is to include 'surface sectors' e.g. flying into Bangkok and making your way by bus or train down to Singapore instead of flying.

If you want to make a donation to the World Land Trust to offset your share of the Carbon Dioxide emitted by your aircraft, check out www.carbonbalanced.org though there of course lots of other similar schemes out there.

As a rough guide, round the world flights trip would cost between £25 - £50 per person to offset depending the number of miles flown. If you are planning on a round the world trip living the high life, renting fast cars and speedboats, you might want to go some way to assuaging any guilt by making a bigger contribution !