How green is the new Eurostar service?

A couple of days ago I was lucky enough to be one of several hundred green activists, academics and hangers on (that’ll be me then) who caught the first Eurostar train out of the new gleaming and incredibly beautiful St Pancras station.

Not only was it the first train to depart from north London as opposed to Waterloo, it also marks a new era for Eurostar in that the company claims the train was the first ever to be carbon neutral. So what does this mean in practice?

When most companies claims to be carbon-neutral there isn't really a huge amount the likes of you and I can do to check up on them. It is slightly different for Eurostar in that while much of their claim has to be taken on trust, there are a few things passengers can do to check the green creds for themselves.

Firstly the trip was really little more than a PR stunt. Eurostar has been trying to green its service for many months now. What happened on Wednesday was that it used the high profile launch of its new service to underline its current green credentials and suggest where it is going in the future.

Compared with flying to Paris the Eurostar is obviously much greener. The company claims that the average train traveller to Paris creates only a tenth of carbon dioxide as an equivalent plane passenger. Eurostar has undertaken to reduce its carbon dioxide output by a further 25% by 2012.

The way in which Eurostar manages to reach carbon neutrality at the moment is (surprise, surprise) via carbon offsetting. You can read the details here and it is encouraging that it is partnering with organisations like Friends of The Earth, who don’t suffer eco-fools gladly.

In the short term too there is a ten point plan for cutting emissions which you can read about here. So how is Eurostar doing so far?

Most of the innovations are going to have to be taken on trust. Eurostar says it is recycling everything that can be recycled, reusing rain water and using more environmentally friendly chemicals in its air conditioning systems - and there’s no way to check up on them.

One thing that is easily trackable though is the commitment to move away from using paper for marketing, ticketing and advertising. However that doesn’t appear to have prevented Eurostar from spending a lot of money in advertisements in deadwood paper and magazines in the run-up to Wednesday. Obviously it makes sense for the company to do more of its marketing and advertising online and I hope it is as good as its word.

Eurostar has also committed to making sure that on board items like napkins and cups are either bio-degradable or recylable. Let’s just say that there are no paper towels in the toilets and as for the toilet paper… well they have stuck to their commitment there.

The most obvious improvement for me though centred around Eurostar's range of food and snacks. The company now says it will stock as many organic products as possible and use fairly traded tea and coffee etc. Well the food on the Eurostar used to be awful, and if you are vegetarian like me, a complete nightmare. If you didn't fancy the cheese sandwich then it was Pringles, Kit-Kats or nothing.

Now the kiosk has a good selection of vegetarian food, including a decent hot option. There’s also Clipper tea and fairly traded coffee and plenty of organic cakes and snacks. Good to see Innocent drinks and Green and Black Chocolate in there too.

According to Eurostar's rep on the train much of the reduction of carbon emissions will revolve around teaching the drivers to operate the train to consume less energy. I haven’t a clue how they will execute this, but I do know that the train sped through London and southern England at incredible speeds. In fact on the Waterloo line it always seemed to spend longer on this side of the channel than in France. Now it is the other way round.

While there is a clear whiff of green marketing going on here, it is good to see Eurostar make big statements on its websites and then start to act on them. Only a fool now would fly between London and Pairs or Brussels, the train really is the most sensible, comfortable and entertaining way to travel.

Btw Eurostar's blog here is an excellent read and has lots of stuff about the first trip.

I also made a short vid which you can watch here.

Comments