Hippyshopper on Eurostar's first ever carbon neutral journey
Today is a big day for green travel: Eurostar's first ever fully carbon-neutral journey across the to Paris has just left St Pancras station in London, and Ashley Norris is blogging the trip for us, live from the train. Read on to find out what's happening...
"The brand new station concourse is filling up, the punters are jostling towards the platform and the first Eurostar train to Paris is set to rocket out of St Pancras station in about twenty minutes time. Yet on board isn’t the usual mixture of local dignitaries, politicians in search of a photo opp and railway enthusiasts. Many of the, ahem, VIP crew for the first journey are green activists, campaigners and of course bloggers (which is where I sneaked in) here to judge for themselves the environmental credentials of Eurostar's new cross channel carbon-neutral service.
It has widely accepted for some time now that the journey between London and Paris by train produces a tenth of the carbon dioxide as one using a plane (11kg as opposed to 122 by plane). But Eurostar claims that thanks to some core changes in its service passengers can enjoy a completely carbon neutral trip."
So can concerned environmentalists pop across the channel, and indeed travel on to the rest of Europe as many big cities like Berlin and Vienna now connect up to the network, without suffering from green guilt?
"Well for starters Eurostar is committed to filling every seat on each train - the Waterloo trains were notorious for being over crowded on occasion yet empty on others. The company has also installed energy meters to keep tabs on air conditioning and heating power consumption. The food is organic and in many instances fairly traded and virtually all the paper used on the trains are recyclable.
The green push even extends to marketing with the service now largely being promoted via the internet (sensible move) rather than deadwood papers and magazines.
Well that’s the theory anyhow, I’ll find out how it all works in practice soon enough."
