Celebrating World Car Free Day

World Car Free Day is held every year on 22 September to encourage people across the globe to travel without using a car.

Days out and international trips are a special part of Girlguiding. Girls might go on their very first trip abroad with their unit, or explore caves, historical sites or cities with other Girlguiding members in their area.

As part of Girlguiding’s environmental plan, we want to keep offering girls these great experiences, but in a way that’s as sustainable as possible and helps protect the planet for future generations. This means considering the environment in all that we do – including how we travel to these special places.

For this year’s World Car Free Day (22 September), we’re hearing from 2 Girlguiding regions about how they’re working to make travel to guiding events more sustainable.

Girlguiding North West England region are working to make their international trips more sustainable through their Journey to Zero plan. This means Girlguiding North West members going on internationals are actively working to offset any impact they have on the environment. They’re exploring how they can travel more sustainably and make positive changes to the environment, wherever they visit. They're also thinking about how they can live more sustainably before they go, to offset the carbon emissions produced on their trip.

Members have been split into 3 teams, all named after 1 of the themes for this year’s trips: team conservation, team community, and team culture. Members are deciding where they’ll travel, what they’ll do, and how they’ll bring in their given theme.

Anna, team culture

We heard from Anna, the trip leader for team culture, about their plans for a 2025 trip to South Korea:

'We're going to South Korea in 2025, basing ourselves in Seoul. Our focus is exploring Korean culture, including music, K-Pop and karaoke. We'll be visiting highlights such as Gyeongbokgung Palace, the K-Pop district and Jogyesa Temple, as well as going to a K-Pop dance class and a karaoke session.'

'Sustainability is an integral part of our trip. We've researched extensively each step of our trip to ensure we're reducing our carbon footprint to neutral, or even negative! One way we're doing this is by using a travel agent who will only use airlines that actively reduce their carbon emissions and publish this information. The travel agent will also work to offset our carbon emissions which helps us massively!'

'We’ll travel consciously in South Korea and will look to eat sustainably and learn how Koreans actively do this in their daily lives. As a group, we're working to reduce our trip to zero carbon by using fundraising as a method for calculating our impact. For example, one of our fundraising activities with units is to use unwanted t-shirts and turn them into bags, scrunchies and bracelets. We're also sourcing eco-friendly, low carbon uniform and taking public transport.'

I would really encourage leaders to make their trips sustainable and work towards making them carbon neutral. It has made us consider each of our trip elements carefully. Our group has challenged each of us to think about finding one thing to change in our daily lives, like having shorter showers, walking to school, eating local produce or washing clothes at 30 degrees instead of 40 degrees. Every step towards carbon neutral counts.'

Girlguiding Anglia

Girlguiding Anglia region have also been looking at how they can help members travel to events more sustainably, but this time, for events a little closer to home!

Back in August, Anglia hosted their very first Hautbois Fest – a large scale festival style event for members, complete with music, adventure and friendship. Girls and volunteers enjoyed adventurous activities, arts and crafts, a pamper zone, an animal conservation area and evening entertainment in the form of silent disco, an outdoor cinema and a gig in a field.

But with nearly 800 attendees, one of the challenges of Hautbois Fest was how to get everyone there! The team behind Hautbois Fest decided to run a special shuttle bus to help transport girls and volunteers from Norwich train station to the event grounds at Hautbois Activity Centre.

The shuttle bus made the event more sustainable, reducing the number of cars on the road. As an added benefit, the free shuttle bus service also allowed units to reduce the cost for girls attending. The shuttle bus service also supported any members who would have found travelling to the event a barrier to them taking part, as they didn’t have to rely on lifts from others. And as an added bonus, it gave girls the opportunity to get more familiar with using public transport to get to the train station.

A total of 144 girls and volunteers used the service each way, allowing the team at Hautbois to reach girls who lived further afield and even promote Girlguiding Anglia at Norwich train station!

Girlguiding HQ was really pleased to work with Hautbois Fest to support the shuttle bus. We did this with a grant from our Adventure Fund, a fund of £400,000 distributed to countries and regions in 2024 to enable adventure activities.  This helped put access as well as sustainability at the heart of this great event. We know that for many units, transport costs provide a barrier to accessing adventure. And with schemes like this, we’re dedicated to working together to bring adventure to more girls than ever.

Ideas of how to go ‘car free’ within your unit:

We know it’s not possible for every girl to go ‘car free’, like those who attend units in rural areas or who need to use a car for accessibility or safety reasons. But for those who can travel to guiding events or their unit meetings another way, you could try:

• A walk or cycle to guiding week.
• Using public transport as a unit to travel to guiding events or unit trips out.
• Encouraging parents to car share to unit meetings, events or residentials where possible.
• Setting your unit a challenge to walk, cycle or take public transport to somewhere they would usually drive to outside of guiding – and ask them to share what they did when you next meet!