6 flights,
29 hours in the air.
4.4 tonnes of CO₂, to get to and from my placement [1]
That’s the same as driving
my little red mini
for 30,000 kilometres,
or 23 days [2]
without ever lifting my foot
off the pedal.
And no,
there’s nothing I could’ve done
to make it carbon-free.
Unless I walked South America and swam the Atlantic,
dodging cargo ships
and drifting nets.
So now what?
How do I fix the sky?
How do I hold myself
accountable to the clouds?
I could plant a grove
100 trees deep
and wait 60 years [3]
as they root into the soil
and lift my carbon
inch by inch.
A single sapling starts small slow, quiet but as years pass its leaves reach higher, its roots dig deeper and it pulls more carbon from the sky
I could recycle
150,000 plastic bottles [4]
one by one
thrown into the green bin
until my arms forget
how to carry anything else.
Or I could live car-free for 4 years – 1 month [5] Walk in the rain,
bike in the snow,
listen to the sound
of traffic I no longer make.
It’s not about guilt,
It’s about weight.
What I put into the world
and how I take it back out
But offsetting
is no magic eraser.
It’s a paper promise, a pause button on pollution
Friends of the Earth remind us [6]
real change is deeper,
rooted in shrinking footprints,
not just planting trees
or counting bottles.
The Earth doesn’t need
a perfect traveller.
Just a thoughtful one.
One who asks:
“What’s worth the footprint?”
And sometimes answers:
“Let’s take the train.”
[1] https://co2.myclimate.org/en/calculate_emissions
[2] https://car-emissions.com/
[3] https://treeplantation.com/tree-carbon-calculator.html
[4] Turner, D. A., Williams, I. D., & Kemp, S. (2015). Greenhouse gas emission factors for recycling of source-segregated waste materials. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 105, 186-197. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2015.10.026
[5] https://mileage-blocker.co.uk/
[6] https://friendsoftheearth.uk/climate/can-flying-ever-be-green
