Trainline’s new yearly-wrap up has revealed the amount of carbon emissions its customers saved in 2023 through personal user behaviour.
The personalised ‘Your Year in Train’ feature, similar to Spotify Wrapped, highlights the amount of carbon emissions saved traveling by train instead of car and what each carbon footprint equates to regarding washing machine usage and tree absorption.
A Trainline spokesperson told Sustainability Beat the feature is part of its ‘I Came By Train’ campaign, highlighting sustainable travel options.
“We’re aiming to build a sense of pride among travellers that they have been choosing the sustainable option and reducing the environmental impact of their journey – even if they didn’t realise it,” they said.
In total, Trainline customers choosing to use trains instead of petrol cars have saved the same amount of CO2 that 77.4 million trees absorb in a year – which would create a forest the size of greater London.
However, instead of celebrating low carbon footprint, many users reinvented the graphics to show how many trains were cancelled and delayed.
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SB journo makes Trainline’s ‘super savers’ list
Fittingly, as part of the Sustainability Beat team, I was listed as one of Trainline’s “all-time top flaming hot CO2 super savers of the year”.
As someone who commutes into London by train at least twice a week, it was pleasantly surprising to read I had managed to save 1.46 tonnes of CO2 in 2023 – which is the same as using my washing machine for 11 years or making 69,809 cups of tea.
It’s also equivalent to the weight of 13 spotted dolphins.
According to the new feature, I created just 659kg of CO2 travelling by train compared to over 2,000kg I would have created by making the same journey by petrol-fuelled car. In less accurate news, it also said I was “obsessed” with London St Pancras.
