When accepting an offer to study overseas it is plain obvious that the first reaction is excitement, what isnt usually considered however is the impact that travelling can have on the environment if not done sustainably.
I study a Bachelor of City Planning at UNSW. This means spending afternoons debating low-carbon urban precincts, delivering presentations on SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communitiea) and using phrases like “liveable density” with complete confidence. And then I booked a return long-haul flight from Sydney to London departing August, and sat with that very quietly for a while.
A Sydney-London return generates rougly 3.5 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per passenger. I know this. I studied this. Yet im still going, because studying urban sustainability from the same suburb you grew up in feels like trying to understand the ocean by reading about salt. Some experiences require prescence. But prescence has a cost, and the most honest starting point is admitting that.
So… I have made myself a deal: if the flight is the unavoidable sin, everything else has to count double.
Before I board, I intend to purchase a verified carbon offset through a certified resoration project – not the sketchy checkout-page kind, but one with proper third-party verification, aligned with SDG 13 (Climate Action). Imperfect? Yes. Better than nothing? Absolutely.
The bigger commitment however, is how I plan to move once I arrive. A Metro card on day one. No car rentals. For weekend trips (there will be many) trains only. Eurostar to Paris. A sleeper to Edingburgh. Rail travel emits roughly six times less CO2 per kilometre than short-haul flying. Every time I choose a four-hour train over a one-hour flight, I inch closer to actually living inside my own values rather than just presenting about them.
On the ground, the plan is simple and unglamorous: bring my keep cup, shop local markets over supermarket chains, cut my meat consumption and research Newcastle’s recycling system on day one (even if it takes an embarrassing amount of time).
What excites me most, honestly, is the chance to observe sustainable urbanism in practice. Newcastle is a city actively reimagining itself – cycling infrastructure threaded along old colliery lines, a waterfront in redevelopment, a coastline that makes climate feel urgent and physical rather than theoretical. I want to take handwritten notes on all of it. I want to bring it home not as slides but as instincts (the kind you only develop by actually being somewhere).
I’m aware my carbon footprint for this trip will not be small. but I would rather be a City Planning Student who grapples honestly with that tension than one who never leaves to see what good, sustainable cities actually look like.
My flight leaves in August. The Metro card comes first thing.
