The search is on for some of the best sustainable travel initiatives in Europe with the launch of the Eurostar Ashden Award for Sustainable Travel.
Working with sustainability experts The Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, Eurostar’s new Award will celebrate and support local sustainable travel projects in Belgium, France and the UK and up to three winners will share £30,000 in prize money.
The Award is open for entries until 25th October 2011 to all Belgium, French and UK based businesses, not for profit groups, social enterprises, public sector organisations, schools and other educational establishments, which demonstrate innovative and practical projects that make a difference to the way people travel.
Judging will be carried out by a panel of experts from the sustainability field including Eurostar Chairman, Richard Brown.
The Eurostar Ashden Award for Sustainable Travel will culminate in May 2012 at the annual Ashden Awards ceremony in London, where the achievements of the finalists from Belgium, France and the UK will be celebrated, and where the ultimate winners will be announced.
The new Eurostar Ashden Award for Sustainable Travel is part of Eurostar’s Tread Lightly programme to reduce the business’ impact on the environment and encourage people to switch to more sustainable modes of transport.
Since 2007, Eurostar’s Tread Lightly programme has made substantial progress towards a ‘ten point plan’ to reduce consumption, source responsibly and recycle.
In 2009, significantly ahead of schedule, the company achieved its original target to reduce CO2 emissions per traveller journey by 25% and increased that target from 25% to 35% by 2012.
This goal also remains in place and the company is on track to meet this challenging target by 2012.
For 2011, Eurostar has further pledged to reduce carbon emissions across the remainder of its business by 25% by 2015.
This ambitious new target will see Eurostar scrutinise every area of its business including its supply chain and other areas outside its immediate business making changes where necessary.
Nicolas Petrovic, Eurostar Chief Executive says:
“At Eurostar, we have long championed the switch to more sustainable modes of transport leading by example through our own Tread Lightly programme.
“By partnering with sustainability experts, The Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy to launch this Award, we will showcase some of the best sustainable travel projects in Belgium, France, and the UK.
“The Eurostar Ashden Award for Sustainable Travel aims to encourage more people to travel sustainably and reduce their own carbon footprints.
“The Award will offer the chance for businesses, schools and social enterprises to bring their projects to a wider audience and highlight their achievements.
“We hope that the Award will inspire more people to consider the environment when they make their travel choices.”
For more information about the new Eurostar Ashden Award for Sustainable Travel or Eurostar’s Tread Lightly programme, visit the website.
To me carpooling and ride sharing seem to be the most viable means of sustainable transport at present. The ridesharing concept has already gone main stream in Europe, especially in France, Spain and now even in the UK. There are several websites & apps (available on mobile as well) which offer ridesharing services. One such Europe wide rideshare platform BlablaCar(in the UK) along with its French(Covoiturage) and Spanish(Comuto) counterparts has managed to gather more than 1.3 million strong community.
Even though petrol price rise is one of the main factors the other important factor which makes it really popular is the environmental(opportunity to reduce carbon foorprint) factor. They have managed to save a wopping £100m and 200,000 tons of CO2 on over more than 6 million shared trips.
The ridesharing concept has several such benefits, among others it even makes the journey a much more sociable experience. One of the ways in which there sites offer security and trust is by allowing the users to rate each other, based on their journey.