2019:Sustainable travelling
Wikimania 2019 works hard to reduce the environmental impacts of the conference as much as we can. At the "A Sustainable Conference" page, we try to describe all the measures we are taking or planning to take in order to reduce the impact on the environment, but one of the largest impacts come from travelling to the conference. On this page, we try to give you ideas and advice on how to make your journey to Stockholm as environmentally friendly as possible!
Do you want to co-travel with others? We are trying to help with the information you might need!
Advantages of not taking the flight
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- Sweden is a beautiful country! Choosing the train or the bus over the flight will give you time to look at the Swedish countryside. You may even have the chance to see an elk!
- Most European trains and buses offer free WiFi. If you go together with other Wikimedians on a train journey, you can even start the pre-conference on the train!
- You make our planet a great favor, reducing your environmental impact while attending a fantastic conference!
General advice
[edit | edit source]- Use trains and buses when viable.[1]
- If you have to take the flight, make use of carbon offsetting.
- Avoid travelling solo by car. If you have to take the car, co-ride with others and try to choose eco-friendly cars.[1]
Travelling from the Nordic countries
[edit | edit source]- From Oslo and Copenhagen, there are plenty of buses and trains. The express train from Copenhagen takes about six hours, giving you plenty of beautiful views and time to work efficiently – most train companies provide WiFi. The trains from Oslo are a bit slower, but still taking about the same number of hours.
- From Helsinki, Tallinn and Riga, there are ferries taking you to Stockholm. The ferry is a nice way of approaching Stockholm, and also with significantly lower emissions than the short distance flights.
Travelling from other European countries to Sweden
[edit | edit source]- It gets more and more popular to take the train to and from Sweden, something which has also been discussed in international media.[2]
- One of the important hubs to get to Sweden is Hamburg, so it is an advise to check for connections from Hamburg and onwards. From Hamburg, it is relatively easy to get to Sweden by train. From Hamburg, Deutsche Bahn takes you to Copenhagen, and from Copenhagen, SJ takes you to Stockholm. From Malmö, there are also night trains going to Stockholm, meaning that you can leave Hamburg in the late afternoon and reach Stockholm early next morning. From Hamburg, night trains go to many parts of Europe.
- Flixbus and other international bus companies go to Stockholm from many places. Flixbus, for example, goes from Hamburg to Stockholm, and from Hamburg to many parts of Europe.
- If you are a lot of people, you can either hire a bus or charter a train. If the number of people joining approaches hundreds, it might even be cheaper per person than taking the flight.
An example itinerary from Hamburg to Stockholm:
Hamburg HBF-Malmö Central
13 August
departure 14:52
arrival 21:06
Book at: bahn.de
Malmö Central-Stockholm, night train
13 August-14 August
departure 22:32
arrival 07:03
Book at: sj.se
An example itinerary from Stockholm to Hamburg:
Stockholm Central-Copenhagen
19 August
departure 08:23
arrival 13:32
book at: sj.se
Copenhagen-Hamburg
19 August
departure 15:10
arrival 20:16
book at: bahn.de
Travelling to Europe from the rest of the world
[edit | edit source]- If you come from another continent and have to take the flight, there are several things you can take into account when booking the flight to reduce the environmental impact:
- Choose direct flights instead of flights with stopovers, or replace the last leg with train or ferry.
- Choose flight companies with less space per person; the more passengers per plane, the less environmental impact per person.
- There are certain cargo shipping companies that take a few passengers and some travel agencies offering such voyages (search for "cargo ship travel", "freight ship passengers" or similar in search engines). This way of travelling is not cheap, takes a long time and the day of arrival might be uncertain (so you would need to include quite a time buffer before Wikimania), but you would travel on a ship that plies between its ports of call anyway, thus not creating extra pollution with your journey.
Facts
[edit | edit source]- Because of the high environmental impact of takeoff and landing, short, regional flights (less than 500 km) are very unfriendly for the environment, reducing up to 50% more carbon emissions than train and buses.
- The differences between flights and trains even out the longer the journey. Buses are still much eco-friendlier.
Organizing initiatives
[edit | edit source]Do you want to go collectively with others? There are some initiatives under planning for shared transport. Please see the travel coordination page!
Carbon offsetting
[edit | edit source]Many of you have to take the flight, because of the far distances. It's not much to do about it. What you can do, if you have the funds to do it, is to try carbon offsetting your flight tickets. There are several companies and organizations that enable carbon offsetting, where you pay for environmentally friendly initiatives that compensates for the cost of your carbon footprint. Klimatkompensera.se and Zeromission are two examples that can be used.