We took on the Car Free Day challenge this Thursday 22nd September, did you?
We decided to take on the Car Free Day challenge as we asked our team members to leave the car at home and travel to work either actively or on public transport.
Sam, Environment and Sustainability Officer, said:
‘Car Free Day is an excellent initiative, especially here in Leeds where our transport system is heavily reliant on the car causing congestion, accidents and a lot of pollution. We are taking on the challenge of being car free to show our team that it is possible to travel to Open Source without their car.’
By taking on the challenge and if every team member is able to travel to Open Source Arts actively or on public transport for just this day we have found, from our research into our carbon footprint, that we could prevent up to 25.8 car driven miles, 5.7 kg of CO2e and 20.64g of health damaging nitrous oxide (NOx) emissions, and take up to 5 cars off the road.
Kirkstall Road, where we are based, is a pollution hotspot in the city, and within the whole of the UK, with data from addresspollution.org suggesting that it is among the top 11% most polluted areas in the UK with pollution levels exceeding three World Health Organisation limits.
However, we must recognise that going car free is not without its challenges. Some of our team are located up to 9 miles away on the other side of the city and others have young children to take to school.
Sheri, member of the Open Source Arts team, said:
‘This Car Free Day I was not able to leave my car at home. Leeds’ bus service is unreliable so I couldn’t risk it proving to be more costly to me by having to pay for a taxi into town if my bus did not turn up. In addition, I also enjoy going to my local gym first thing in the morning but unfortunately there is no bus connection from where I live that would take me close enough to the gym; even though it is located in the ward that I live in! I would not feel safe walking there alone in the dark either. Ultimately the poor bus service and lack of public transport system and connections in my area would not allow me to leave my car at home and go car free regardless of how much I would like to.’
Sam added:
‘Although we have seen that going car free is not easy and might not be possible for all of our team. We still want to use the Car Free Day challenge to learn. It was an excellent opportunity to explore what issues our team members face when leaving the car at home. We can use our learnings from the day to explore better ways to support our staff to leave the car at home more often and reduce the number of car journeys taken by our team.’
We are also planning to use Car Free Day and what we learn as a springboard to begin experimenting with new ways of thinking and discussing how we can support our team to travel in a way that is sustainable for them and the planet.
What did you do on Car Free Day? We’d love to hear about your experiences.
Contact Us
Open Source Arts
Unit 1a Aire Place Mills
143 Kirkstall Road
LS3 1JL
