In early 2023, we at GreenDependent decided to launch a 1.5° blog. This is because we think it's important to show how we in the EU 1.5° Lifestyles project team try to live a small (carbon) footprint life. That it can be possible – even if it is not always easy and we cannot (yet!) do all things 1.5° at the same time. And that there are many different ways to do it. As we often say in Hungary: everyone does it differently.
(You can read our previous blog posts in English here: 1,2,3,4,5.)
Orsolya Antal – there aren’t enough buses
On weekdays, most of our family travel to work or school in a low-consumption car (filling up the car as we are 5) and then on the way back me and the kids take the bus. The car is driven home by my husband, who commutes 80 km a day. Although some of the buses in our area have been replaced by new, Hungarian-made, fuel-efficient buses in recent years, this does not compensate for the constant congestion and the 20-minute of suffering. How can this become sustainable transport? In the countryside we need at least three times as many buses as we have today, and not only in our region! But it is also a fact that if you can afford to live a "slow life" one or two days a week and spend some time walking by the river for half hour with the children, you have a chance of catching a bus with empty seats and the possibility of an afternoon siesta.
When I go to the GreenDependent office, I always take the train: it could be comfortable and fast. However, these days there are regular delays in winter and summer. If not for them, the 170km would be a quick trip, but usually something happens and we arrive at our destination with our problem-solving skills perfected. Which is an advantage after all.
Eszter Csiki - is the scooter the new bicycle?
Instead of the classic "green life by bicycle” approach, in our everyday life the scooter is the #gamechanger. It fits into a small space, but it can also be folded and used to transport children and luggage (at your own risk... J).
We use public transport for all our other daily tasks and activities, which is one of the reasons why we chose to live in a place with good transport connections.
I travel to work by train, for which GreenDependent provides a travel subsidy, and I have found the train to be very convenient and fast in the suburbs.
We don't have a car and we don't miss it! We use car-sharing services when necessary and have had a very positive experience so far. The only and main challenge is the child seat, which is not available in these cars, so requires additional planning and logistics, but we have always found a (legal and safe!) solution so far.
Edina Mihály – by bike in summer and winter
We moved to our current home in Gödöllő just 5 years ago, and the main criterion for choosing the location was that all the necessary infrastructure (bus and train stations, shops, market, etc.) should be within walking or at least cycling distance. I didn't know it at the time, but within a few months I started working for GreenDependent and I'm lucky that our office is only 3-4 minutes walk from my home. :)
As my son's kindergarten is a bit further away, we cycle during the week, which only the most extreme weather conditions can stop us from doing - and we still prefer to walk. My husband works in Budapest when he's not at his home office, but thanks to the proximity of the bus station he uses public transport. We have a small car that gets very low mileage, but we use it mostly for weekend visits to relatives. A couple of years ago I inherited another, bigger car, but given our lifestyle we decided we didn't need it, so we gave it on permanent loan to a social enterprise we like, who put it to good use.
Anita Szőllőssy - public transport and sharing systems
Although my family has always had a car, because my dad is a transport driver, my mum and I have been going everywhere by bus, tram and underground since I was a child. When I started working at GreenDependent and commuting regularly to Gödöllő, it was natural to choose the long-distance bus (as I travel there from Budapest).
I don't have my own car, although in the last few years I started driving and using a car-sharing system, which is often very handy. In my everyday transport, this has become less of a feature, but I do like to use other sharing systems, such as a shared bike or electric scooter, which are easy to use, practical, fast and actually quite fun.
Edina and Kristóf Vadovics - work locally whenever it's possible
For us, as the Hungarian newspaper HVG wrote, it was a decades-old resolution that in order to reduce commuting to work, we would work to find local jobs and, like our colleague, Edina Mihály and her family, to have a wide range of public transport nearby. And because this was not feasible where we used to live, we moved to Gödöllő. Of course, since then there has been Covid closures and the reign of "work from home", but we wouldn't do it any differently today.
Because of this, we can walk and cycle to work, shop and do business locally with relatively ease on a day-to-day basis. However, we did have to get used to cycling in the rain and ice and prepare for it, especially Edina. But by now we have good cycling rain jackets and saddle warmers :) It is important for anyone who is changing to a cycling lifestyle to be prepared: a bike that is easy to handle, protective gear, a good cycling basket and bag (ours are now over 10 years old Hungarian craft products), and practical clothing are important. And all this required a bit of investment. But now we can do a big shopping by bike, especially if we go with more people (see the picture of Edina's shopping bag). Some of you will probably say that yes, OK, but we have more bags than that if we do a big weekly shop... well, yes, but there are more family members to involve (=more bags to carry), you can have a bike trailer, and ultimately we want to be 1.5° shoppers, don’t we?!
We also actually have a car, a hybrid model. We try to use it as little as possible, and when we do drive, we try to organise and connect as many things as possible. We usually use the car to visit our families, for holidays, GreenDependent events, and transporting tree saplings in our TreeDependent programme. We conscientiously monitor our consumption to see where we can reduce.
So far, we have tried car-sharing through ad-hoc sharing of our own car, but if there were well-functioning sharing systems in our town with multiple cars, we would embark on this adventure too.
So, this is how we, the GreenDependent team, travelled in 2023.
At GreenDependent, we track our commuting and work-related journeys, meaning that at the end of each month we all record the kilometres we've travelled and calculate the carbon footprint of our journeys. For a few years now, as part of our voluntary responsibility activities, we have also been planting native fruit trees, among other things to offset travel emissions, as part of our own TreeDependent programme.
Our work-related travel is partly done by car, because there are usually a lot of supplies, materials (like the Climate Puzzle :) ) and several colleagues travelling together. But if it's possible, we also prefer to take the train or bus. We travel abroad within Europe by train now, and further afield we very rarely take work-related trips. These we consciously keep to a minimum (2 in the last 10 years).
Compiled by: the staff of GreenDependent, with an introduction and conclusion by Edina Vadovics
Translation: Edina Mihály