What can I do?

What can we change in our everyday life and actions to contribute to more sustainable travel and to work towards a change in the political framework? Here we want to show ways in which we can travel more sustainably. Rethinking how we are mobile can also mean being less mobile overall. In the end, of course, it is always up to each individual to decide what is reasonable.

Holidaying differently

Global tourism is responsible for large quantities of greenhouse gas emissions, largely caused by people from rich countries. Travel by air is the most important factor. But we can holiday differently!

For this, we need to re-define our understanding of holidays and address the following questions:

  • Where could I relax that is accessible by other modes of transport than flying?

  • Can I satisfy my need for adventure, recreation, exchange or education through new activities and other forms of holiday that do not require long-distance travel?

    • Our list of ideas for alternative holidays: hiking, canoeing, adventure parks, sport courses (surfing, dancing, horseback riding, climbing, cycling, yoga, sailing), adventures such as paragliding, farm vacations for families, discovering adventure worlds (virtual reality games, knight games, visiting centre parcs), visiting festivals, regional cultural festivals, donkey trekking, covered wagon rides, renting a camper, bike tours, wine tasting, working in a sustainable project, e.g. reforestation in forest areas, archery, pottery making, beekeeping, learning Italian or photography…. e.g. reforestation in forest areas, archery, pottery, beekeeping, learning Italian or photography…

A motto for more climate-friendly holidays could be “travelling instead of flying”. Slow, grounded travel creates more space for encounters than fast air travel. For trips to distant destinations, we should consider whether we can travel less often and stay longer.

In a 2019 survey by the European Investment Bank (EIB), 36% of European respondents said they already fly less often for holidays for climate reasons. 75% said they would do so in 2020. To reinforce this trend, good alternatives for destinations that are closer to home need to become better known. Sustainable tourism has to be cool.

There are already a plethora of operators and platforms that support this:

  • Tour operators for sustainable tourism:

    • Forum anders reisen: association of sustainable holiday operators

    • Alpine Pearls: environmentally-friendly holidays in the Alps

    • Renatour: journeys throughout Europe for families, hiking fans and people who want to take a break in nature

    • More providers for travelling without flying can be found on the fluglos-glücklich website

  • Portals for sustainable accommodation:

  • Home exchange, e.g. via GuestToGuest, Haustauschferien, Homelink International, Intervac

  • Apps and providers of non-aviation transport:

    • Gleisnost in Freiburg: travelling by train to different countries, tips for different kinds of journey (city breaks, adventure trips, nature holidays…)

    • Kopfbahnhof in Berlin: travel agency that specializes in rail travel

    • Die Bahnfüchse in Berlin: travel agency that specializes in rail travel

    • Traivelling: online booking of rail travel around the world

    • The Trainline: plan and book rail travel in Europe

    • Seat Sixty-One: online assistance for booking rail journeys around the world

    • Rome2Rio: online tool for finding connections with different modes of transport around the world

    • langsamreisen.de: adventure holidays without travelling by plane

Environmentally-friendly alternatives – on holiday and in everyday life

To truly travel sustainably, more aspects are important than just the mode of transportation used to get to a there. A few thoughts on this can be found in this article. If we have a good experience on sustainable holidays, we can also contribute to shaping the discourse about more climate-friendly travel. The more we spread the word about greener alternatives, the more compelling and established they can become.

Even outside of our holidays, there are ways to travel more sustainably and fly less. For example, students can help to make their class trips more sustainable. EPiZ Berlin has compiled a list of tips on how to do this here, and specific travel tips and offers are available from Naturfreunden or WWF, for example.

Night-time alternatives

For those wanting to protect the climate, night trains are a perfect alternative to flying on journeys of 600 to 2000 kilometres. For distances that could potentially be covered by night trains, according to a study, the average emissions from flying are 190 to 215 g CO₂ per passenger kilometre. If the indirect climate-damaging effects are also considered, the climate-damaging effect is currently even about three times as high on average. By contrast, rail emissions are only 15 to 45 g CO₂ per passenger kilometre, i.e. six to ten times less CO₂ arises per passenger kilometre. If the electricity for the trains comes from renewable energies, they even run practically CO₂-free. In addition, night trains run at times when there are fewer bottlenecks on the routes. Additional night trains therefore do not require any new infrastructure and could contribute relatively quickly to the necessary reduction in transport emissions by 2030.

Night trains – services reduced and expanded again

Unfortunately, Deutsche Bahn (DB) discontinued all night train services in 2016, however. France also greatly reduced its night train network in 2013 and 2017. But there are also changes that offer a more optimistic outlook. For example, Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) has taken over Germany’s night trains and many of its routes. The Swedish government also announced in 2020 that it will provide funding for new lines connecting Stockholm and Malmö with Hamburg and Brussels from 2022. The French transport minister has also pledged new night train services. Furthermore, a new night connection between Brussels and Vienna has been running since 2020. The eastern EU countries Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia have also been served by a new night train service since June 2020. In Switzerland, new routes are also being considered. The Dutch railway plans to operate a night line from Amsterdam to Nuremberg and Vienna starting in December 2020. In Germany, the U.S. company RDC has been operating the new Alp-Sylt night express since 2020. However, all these new launches have been particularly difficult due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It is to be hoped that they will become permanently established despite the pandemic.

Potentials of night trains

Night trains are currently used more for city trips on vacation than for business trips. For the latter, night trains are an alternative if they depart between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. (i.e. after the last flights have taken off) and arrive between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. the next day. According to a study by international rail operators, the western corridor in Europe, i.e. London-Madrid and Amsterdam-Madrid, an axis from Spain via Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels to London, and the southern corridor in particular have high potentials for competitive operation compared with flying. In a study conducted for the German Ministry of Transport, Fraunhofer ISI calculated a CO₂ reduction of approx. 50 kilotons CO₂ per year and a maximum of 100 kt CO₂ per year in a realistic scenario for seven night train services. However, if night trains were expanded more widely, their climate protection potential would also substantially increase: Transport & Environment calculates that the potential CO₂ reduction of 30 new night train services amounts to 13 Mt CO₂ per year.

Without government support and with simultaneous subsidization of air travel, cross-border night trains can often barely be operated profitably. This is because there are a number of obstacles that need to be overcome in order to create and use the climate-friendly alternative to flying at night and during the day. These include, for example, excessively high track access charges, a lack of political will, and a lack of technical compatibility and infrastructure for cross-border train services.

Less flying after Covid-19?

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, air travel unexpectedly plummeted. Suddenly, a lot of people were forced to find alternatives to travelling by plane. What can we learn from the Covid-19 crisis in terms of transport? Where are we already independent of flying?

According to a forsa survey carried out by the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU), 86% of respondents are in favour of organizing meetings and conferences more by video or telephone, even after the Covid-19 crisis. Almost three quarters of the citizens believe that work should increasingly be carried out from home in the future.

So there seems to be a lot of support for reducing business travel. In summer 2020, 80% of citizens in Germany wanted to avoid flying for both holiday and business. This was due to the fear of contracting the Covid-19 virus as well as the travel restrictions still in place.

New behaviour patterns, eco-friendly alternatives

We made the experience at Oeko-Institut in 2020 that co-operations work very well even without business trips and physical meetings. Of course, not every meeting can be replaced by a video conference. But what we learn from the Covid 19 pandemic can influence our travel behaviour in the long term.

The unprecedented circumstances of the pandemic can help us rethink our behaviours and experiment with more climate-friendly alternatives. Positive experiences with holidaying by car or train that we would not have made under “normal” circumstances may lead us to continue to behave differently after the pandemic ends. At the same time, the forced deceleration can also lead to isolation and less participation. Perhaps the urge to travel long distances will be all the greater after the pandemic ends. In which direction the development will go cannot be foreseen in the fall of 2020. Let’s hope that the crisis will be used as an opportunity for more eco-sufficiency.

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