Why calculate the carbon footprint of your trip?

Tourism contributes around 8% of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, largely through transport and this contributes to climate change, which will (and already has) dramatic consequences on our planet and our societies.

At jalay.io, we consider that as travelers, we have a responsibility to reduce our emissions and to contribute positively to carbon neutrality.

The first step in this awareness is to understand the impact of our trip, and therefore to calculate your carbon footprint.

This will allow us in a second step to seek alternative means of transport to reduce our emissions and to contribute to carbon neutrality by financing organizations supporting projects with positive impact.

You can find more details about our partners [here].

How do we calculate the carbon footprint of your trips?

Firstly we need to collect information about your trip, and more specifically the number of kilometers you have traveled with each mode of transport.

We calculate the kilometers using the distance between the departure and arrival location using Google Maps.

Then, we multiply the distance traveled by each mode of transport with a "carbon emission factor".

We use the most recent emission factors possible and taken from official sources, such as ADEME (the French Agency for the Ecological Transition).

Finally, we multiply the result obtained by 23 € to give you a recommendation of the amount of donation to be made.

To obtain a price / t CO2, it is necessary to calculate the cost of the financed project which is divided by the number of tons of CO2 reduced or sequestered.

In order not to disadvantage organizations that cannot measure the extent of their impact, we have chosen to take a high average on various CO2 sequestration projects that are currently being carried out to arrive at € 23 per tonne of CO2 emitted.

Why are the results different from other calculators?

There are many online calculators, and if you have the patience to test a few, you'll notice that your trip's carbon footprint is different.

Why ? Does this mean that the results are unreliable?

In fact, the difference in the results may be due to two things.

First, some calculators only include a limited number of modes of transport.
We have tried on jalay.io to include a number of categories large enough to cover the majority of your trips, without overloading you with work when entering your trip on the platform.

Then the emission factors used may vary.
On the airplane, for example, we can find factors that range from single to double. In fact, it depends on the source used and what is included in the emission factor.

For the aircraft, we have chosen to include the impact of contrails, which accentuate the greenhouse effect and therefore climate change.

Are the results reliable?

Keep in mind that results are always orders of magnitude, not absolute truths.
After all, it will be impossible to directly measure the emissions coming out of your car's muffler! We therefore use these emission factors, which are only averages.

To not complicate the calculator, we have chosen to create 13 categories (and that's already a lot!).

Sub-categories should be included to increase the degree of precision: a fiat 500 does not emit the same amount of carbon per kilometer than a 4x4!
In addition, there are differences by geography - traveling a kilometer by train in the United States emits three times more carbon than traveling the same kilometer in France.

You guessed it, so we had to find a compromise between precision and ease of use, a real balancing act.

We plan to refine the emission factors in a second version of the calculator. And in the meantime, the results provided are already very complete.