4 December 2009

News from the inside

Trains: good for the environment - bad for my back...

Hayley here, coming to you live from Copenhagen. This is my second day in Copenhagen – I arrived yesterday morning after a mere 20 hour train journey: London – Brussels – Cologne – Copenhagen. I’d love to say it was a wonderful trip with gorgeous scenery but I’m not going to lie to you, in truth it was only daylight for all of three hours and when we weren’t on a train we were stuck in cold draughty train station trying to find somewhere to sit down that didn’t require us to buy yet another cup of tea or more cake. The sleeper train wasn’t exactly the lap of luxury (we went for the cheapest 6-berth option, there were more luxurious cabins) although according to Sue I didn’t wake up when passport control did their rounds so I guess I did get some sleep.

Having said all that, I wouldn’t have it any other way and I did get some quiet reading time. Taking the train is the right thing to do and maybe 20 hrs is how long it should take to get from London to Copenhagen. I hope more people follow our lead although I’ve not exactly done a great job of selling it to you.

At the Climate Exchange we’ve had a lot of pledges already – the best being ‘I will take more showers with my boyfriend – to save on hot water of course’. No name against that one. With the Danes' love of meat, their pledges to cut down on meat consumption seem to dominate the pledge wall. So at least the locals recognise food’s high impact but at the moment seem to be more inclined to swap their beef for turkey rather than going vegetarian. The restaurant we were at last night was very nice and quite cosy and local with a good view of the fireworks over at the Christmas Market (and yes, there was a short debate about the carbon impacts of fireworks but we quickly concluded that ‘per capita’ emissions from the ‘consumption’ of fireworks can’t be that bad as thousands of people watch and take pleasure from the displays. Feel free to prove me wrong!) Anyway, the restaurant had a special climate-friendly menu which was based on locally sourced foods, still not meat free but apparently the mallards are wild. We of course opted for vegetarian dishes, there wasn't anything vegan which put an end to Jennie’s day of trying very hard to be a low-carbon vegan in Denmark!

I was interviewed by the Conference organisers today about what we are doing here, see my video below…

Hayley Bell
Sustainable Business Manager