For the second edition of Europe on Track, Y4PT has been very pleased to collaborate with AEGEE. We consider this project as a great way to mobilize the European youth, have a grasp of their vision of the world and encourage them to reflect about different challenges and solutions. Considering that Y4PT’s objective is to encourage the use of more sustainable modes of transport, we supported the project through two initiatives.

Firstly, as the 6 AEGEE ambassadors were travelling around Europe by different means of transport, we offered them a way to better understand the impact of their mobility choices on our climate. Why is this important?

In the EU, transport is responsible for 25% of the total greenhouse gases emissions (GHG). And while you could think that the majority of these emissions are due to the transport of goods around the continent, passenger transport is actually responsible for 58% of the EU transport emissions! It is therefore crucial for the European citizens to understand that their daily mobility choices can have a real impact on the EU efforts to decrease its GHG emissions and thus avoid the worst impact of climate change.

To help our ambassadors monitor their choices, Y4PT members designed a carbon footprint calculator specifically dedicated to transport.

The ambassadors of Europe on Track are in their 4^th day of travelling and they have already travelled more than 4 000 km around Europe.

In order to reduce the environmental impact of their travel, the ambassadors are not only trying to use the sustainable means of transport, but also measuring their carbon footprint.

But what is Carbon Footprint?

In a nutshell, Carbon Footprint is the shorthand to describe the best estimate that we can get of the full climate change impact of something. That something could be anything – an activity, an item, a lifestyle, a company, a country or even the whole world.

As we know, climate change is one of the greatest challenges of the modern age and reducing the carbon emissions is one of the main solutions for this issue.

When we first heard about Europe on Track at Y4PT we immediately thought… what a great idea! What a great idea to open the mind of young Europeans, to encourage them to discover new cultures and new ways of thinking and to make them travel throughout Europe. So we asked ourselves, how could we contribute to this project? How could we bring the transport related issues to the heart of the project?