How we travel from one place to the next is one of the ways we cause the most polluting gases at home (around 25% of our carbon footprint!). Yet we need to travel to do all the things we need and want to do in life. How do we go about trying to step lighter on the planet with such a difficult problem?
Our Trip Planner invites your family to explore this issue by planning a few of your monthly trips together. Learn about travelling in general including the different options you have and also about what that means in terms of the pollution you are creating.
This is what you would need to do:
- Get together at the weekend and think about a trip you need to take: a trip to the supermarket, to see the grandparents or to go to your swimming lessons
- Print the Trip Planner Worksheets below.
- Start with the first worksheet.
- Fill in the “Date”, and the “From” and “To” location. You could go “From: home” and “To: the supermarket”
- Draw out why you are going there in the Reason space. Is it to visit your grandma? Is it to buy groceries for the week?
- Find out the “Distance” between the two points.
- Option A – younger kids: Just note down if it is “Short distance”, “Medium distance” or “Long distance”.
- Option B – older kids: Have a look at google maps and note down the distance in kilometers. Fill in the number in the “Distance” section
- Spend a bit of time drawing your trips in the provided maps. It gives you an opportunity to explore your surroundings together!
- Colour in your mode of transport. Will you go by bike? By car? Will you take the train? Have a look and discuss the number of “polluting gases” (little clouds) each mode of transport produces. These representations are very rough (the real number depends on a lot of factors, and it is only important to have a rough idea of what is better or worse).
- Have a look at the second worksheet. Can you work together at joining each mode of transport with the appropriate picture on the right? Each vehicle will be joined with one of the types of “power” and may join with “Can it be used by many people?”. These are the main factors that make a mode of transport “better” than others.
- Now, go back to the first worksheet:
- Option A – younger kids: count the number of clouds under your chosen mode of transport and draw the same amount in the “Polluting gases section”
- Option B – older kids: find out from here the real number of grams of CO2 (main polluting gas) produced by each mode of transport. Multiply the number in “Distance” by what you obtain from the linked graph and note it down in “Polluting gases” (this is Polluting gases = Distance x CO2 factor).
- Jot down your trip in the third worksheet, the “Trip log”. Select if it is a Short or Medium/Long Distance Trip. Write down the mode of transport and number of polluting gases (either approximate or exact). Try again at some other point in the week (print the first worksheet again) and add to the log. Why not walk? Or get the bikes out? Discuss together the different results.
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