Attending the home builders convention in Las Vegas might be the most important date in your calendar but emissions when flying long haul have a negative effect on our environment. Surely we all know this? BuilderScrap.com aren’t suggesting you stop but lets be smart about it. Lets look at the detail.

Slightly fewer than half of respondents (41%) had taken a flight in the twelve months prior to the survey (between March 2008 and February 2009) for leisure, holidays or for visiting friends or family. This represents a small decrease over the last two to three years – 45% of respondents in the 2007 Defra survey said they had flown during the year 2006.

Those who had flown in the last 12 months were asked how many flights they had taken within the UK, to other European countries and to countries outside of Europe. The results from these questions are presented in Table 31 compared with results from the 2007 Defra survey.

Respondents who had flown in the last year were most likely to have flown to other countries within Europe (75%), followed by flights to countries outside Europe (41%). About one quarter who had flown in the last year said they had taken a flight within the UK (24%). For each of these destination categories, it was most likely that respondents had flown once within the 12 month period.

Around half (55%) of those who had taken a flight within the UK had done so once. Similarly, around half (56%) who had taken a flight to another country within Europe had done this once, while nearly two-thirds (63%) who had taken a flight outside of Europe had done this once.

The mean number of flights taken within the UK had increased from 0.4 to 0.8 between 2007 and 2009. However, this appears to have been driven partly by a small proportion of respondents (less than 1%) who had taken a very large number of flights within the UK (20 or more in the last 12 months). Also the proportion of respondents who had flown within the last year and had taken at least one flight within the UK had increased to just less than one quarter (from 18% in 2007 to 24% in 2009).

The mean number of flights taken to other countries within Europe and to countries outside Europe had not changed since the 2007 Defra survey.
All respondents including those who had not flown in the last twelve months were asked the extent to which they had considered taking fewer flights. The question was asked using the stages of change response scale and the results are presented in Table 32 (including as a percentage of all respondents and of all respondents who had flown in the last 12 months).

About one quarter of respondents said they were already taking fewer flights and maintaining this as a behaviour. The proportion of respondents who reported that they were taking fewer flights was similar regardless of whether it was expressed as a proportion of all respondents or of those who had flown in the previous 12 months. Of those who had flown in the last 12 months, nearly one quarter (22%) were at the pre-contemplative stage of reducing the number of flights they took and more than one third (36%) said they had considered taking fewer flights but had rejected the idea – the latter compared with 21% of all respondents reporting this. A small proportion, of those respondents who had flown in the last 12 months, were contemplating the behaviour (6%) or had relapsed after trying to take fewer flights (3%).