Car sharing emissions; What we are doing at Hiyacar
Everyone here at Hiyacar shares a common goal, connecting drivers to cars when and where they want them. But not everyone has the same drive, for some of us it’s the love of cars, for others it’s the opposite and they want to see fewer cars on the road. For everyone, it’s about doing something sustainable.
Everyone knows that transport-related carbon emissions are one of the biggest contributors to global warming and cars play a big part in that contribution. Despite their flaws, cars play a huge part in our societies. After all, you can’t take your new wardrobe home from Ikea on the back of the bus. If we are to continue our reliance on cars then it needs to be more sustainable; that means fewer cars, used more.
Depending on which report you read, the average car is parked for somewhere between 92% & 96% of the time and the carbon emissions that go into the manufacturing of some cars can even outweigh the exhaust emissions over the car’s lifetime. Fewer cars, used more, will produce less emissions from manufacturing.
The UK and most parts of the world still have a “one car per person” mentality but it’s slowly starting to change, after COVID people have found other ways to get around from walking, to cycling, which means more people selling their cars and more people sharing cars.
From what we are seeing, the UK is sharing cars more than ever which is great but it’s a double-edged sword, whilst we are still reliant on traditional combustion engines, more trips mean more exhaust emissions. To tackle this we teamed up with TreeForCities to enable drivers to contribute to cleaner air in their local communities by offsetting emissions from their trip. You can find more info about the programme on our site.
We did our research on offsetting and it’s fair to say that planting trees and claiming to be carbon neutral has its critics and some of them have a point. So we decided not to take the easy route of washing our hands and saying our job here is done. We have always said that Hiyacar is here for the long haul and that means doing everything sustainably, including our impact on the environment.
This partnership with TreesForCities is just a baby step on our sustainability journey, we are already promoting electric and hybrid vehicles by lowering our commission on these and we are working on partnerships to help support sustainable towns & cities in the UK. We also want to branch out and help those in countries directly affected by climate change, to do this we need our community to keep sharing.
