Life Without Airplanes

[differentnameforthis]

Following on from Would you be bothered if there were never any plane flights ever again and my comment of

'All those saying they would love to live without planes, how about you spend the next month not using anything that has been in a plane, and let us know how practical it was...

Riven & BigHairyLeggedSpider have taken up the challenge. They are going to see if they can live without anything that has been imported by airfreight.

They will report here & let us know how they are doing. As should anyone else who wants to join in.

Now, just to try & find details of what is imported via airfreight

Great idea. Happy to give it a go if we can come up with some ideas on what is imported by air.

From a wider viewpoint, it is worth bearing in mind that we are often forced to use airfreight when sea transport would do just as well - for example, I am pretty certain that at work when we send a parcel to Ireland, it goes to Swansea and thence by air (there is no surface option to choose, and Airsure is the only fully traced overseas service from sender to destination) - yet we live 6 miles from the ferry port . . . (and a hell of a long way from Swansea).

I think parcels (generally for work) would be the main thing we have that is air-freight. We always choose surface when it is an option (eg parcels of books from the States), but it is very hard to get surface post for a small package.

Presumably you mean not getting anything new that has airfreighted parts else you'll probably have to ditch anything hightech like computers.

Is there an exception for pharmaceuticals? I suspect one of DHs essentials is manufactured in the US and flown.

As a rule I don't fly for holidays and to my knowledge nothing I buy has been air-freighted. It's really very easy so I'll be happy to continue

Yup I'm up for that. If anyone can find any sites which tell me how stuff is imported in then I'd be greatful!

Grimma, are you sure that high-tech parts are airfreighted - I would have expected them to be shipped because of the cost advantage?

Annoyingly it seems to be quite hard to find statistics on air freight into Britain by sector - unless I'm missing something then this link from the DoT has international shipping broken down by type of good, but not air freight. Anyone got time to trawl through the ONS data sets?

I've also just found this which might be a useful starting point.

sorry Riven, x-post

The finished computer may come from China by ship, but I'll bet that its got components in it (chips etc) which have previously been air freighted.

All sorts of bits of cars, washing machines etc etc...

Not sure about grapes - they used to be available before air freighting was commonplace. It probably varies with region/season.

x-post takver - well, they were specifically mentioning small high-tech components on the radio as examples of items which are air-freighted. I don't think R4 reporters make up that sort of thing so yes, I'm sure!

Hmm, I am less optimistic about R4 journos, I'm afraid - IMO they ring up someone who might know something about the subject, & say "what do you think about X" - you say, "well, I'm not sure, but maybe A, B & C" and next thing its on the radio "industry sources say that A, B & C are critical factors . . ."

However, it does seem quite possible/likely that small high value components could be airfreighted, so I'm not disagreeing with you!

Surely everything would be imported by boat nstead though, so you wouldn't have to live without anything in reality? Suplliers would just have to adjust for a longer delivery time?

I hate planes, am very pleased not to hear them jetting over.

DH & I were just discussing this - our feeling was that the one major difference (at least for us) would be spare parts.

Very often, something breaks down, & the parts come airmail from Germany or Japan because there are so many different models of tractor/chainsaw/washing machine out there. It wouldn't really be feasible to wait 6 weeks for them to come surface mail (and no doubt it would then be the wrong part as it always is ), so I guess there would need to be fewer models & parts would need to be more interchangeable between them.

Exactly, or people would need larger stocks. Sure, people could adjust to shipping non-perishables, but it would be quite an upheaval in some industries, shifting from the 'just in time' paradigm.

This is what the DfT say about goods carried:

"The commodities that make up the majority of air freight transported comprise specialist machinery (especially electronic goods), telecommunications equipment, medical and pharmaceutical products, textiles, foodstuffs and photographic equipment.

In weight terms, the largest export commodity categories are miscellaneous manufactures (15%); other electrical machinery (15%). For imports the most important categories by weight are fruit and vegetables (13%), photographic equipment (11%), travel goods (8%), telecommunications and audio equipment (9%), office machinery (5%), general industrial machinery (10%) and metal working machinery (5%)." Link: here

Sorry I didn't come back last night, went to bed!

GrimmaTheNome, yup, the idea is not to buy anything new that has been transported in a plane.

Medication is definitely an exception!

TBH I do think the 'non-plane' issue is very complicated. Loads of companies (councils even) send representatives abroad, or import things other than raw materials/parts for their products.

The idea of not flying was discussed wrt "peak oil" but I think the knock on effects of the ash might be (long-term) a good thing

But companies need a major re-think, wasn't there a boat recently with sails; when I was at college I intended (before I dropped out) to design a wind assisted catamaran with container carrying capacity.....this was in '89 & I was laughed at

Only perishables would ever be air-freighted because it's way too expensive when there's an alternative. Unless there was some sort of emergency, electronic components would be shipped.

More fruit and veg is shipped, rather than air freighted, than you might imagine. As for grapes - some definitely aren't I'm very relieved to say. I'm currently (and still guiltily) eating them out of season right now because they seem to be the only thing that keeps my morning sickness at bay!

Hippy guilt

Only just saw Takver's post about DfT's stats above - very interesting! I'm guessing most of that air-freighting of non-perishables is for relatively urgent business purposes.

KatyMac I agree that there is lots of scope for rethink - often IMO flying for business purposes is both unnecessary and disliked by the people doing it - but happens because it is just the norm (speaking as someone who has done too much business flying in the past).

We had an interesting experience in the community I used to live in - we had a visitor on one of our courses who was relatively senior in BT. He was very interested in sustainability issues, but had never seen any figures about the relative contribution to CO2 emissions from flying relative to other activities. He was so convinced that he went back to work & apparantly told all his staff that they had to do all their meetings by teleconference thereafter! Of course I don't know whether they stuck to it (and clearly BT should be able to videoconference if anyone can) but still, it shows that if you can reach the right people and convince them it should be able to make a big difference quite fast.

I wonder what the knock on effect of all the "non plane use" would be though. I am thinking of things like:

• increased unemployment as pilots and cabin crew are no longer required in such high numbers
• taxi drivers who rely on airport runs
• airport staff losing work due to reduced demand
• lack of revnue to countries where our exports come from - are these likely to invlude countries who rely on foreign money coming in?

etc.

According to this new BBC article today we import only 1.5% of our fruit and veg:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8630058.stm

One of the reasons I get my veg and stuff from Riverford is that they never air-freight.

But Hullaby, there would be increases in staffing of train, bus and ferry companies to compensate. High speed hydrofoil routes to Europe would doubtless appear. Exporters of produce would have to switch to less perishable goods.