Strava has announced a new tool that focuses on carbon savings. Starting today (Cycle to Work Day in the UK), users who tag their activities as commutes on Strava can see their estimated carbon savings when commuting by running, walking, cycling or e-biking instead of traveling by car.
‘With transport decarbonisation key to achieving net zero goals, this latest update from Strava is a timely addition for helping to advance and quantify carbon savings, as well as encouraging more environmentally friendly modes of travel.’
A recent study revealed that 72% of companies have mandated office returns, and commuting by bike and foot around the world has been further influenced by a global fuel and cost of living crisis. Through the update, which displays the carbon saved figure on user activities labelled as ‘commute’, Strava hopes to influence more of its global community of over 100 million users to choose less carbon-intensive means of commuting.
Brian Bell, Strava’s Vice President of Global Communications and Social Impact, said “At Strava we are proud to consistently provide our community with product features and updates that motivate them to be more active.
“The new feature unlocks a universal action that anyone on Strava can be part of, and our hope is that when armed with the power to choose between a less eco-friendly form of commuting versus a more human powered approach – they bias towards the more sustainable option.
“By providing more visibility on carbon savings, we look to inspire individual action towards a common goal of reducing carbon emissions globally.”
The new feature supports Strava’s ongoing efforts to improve infrastructure investment for greater active transportation access. Since 2020, Strava has been providing de-identified, aggregated, activity data insights on commuting trends for free to city planners, advocacy groups and researchers via Metro, a Strava proprietary web platform available to qualifying partner organizations.
Community members who have opted-in and track their trips on Strava are anonymously feeding into the Metro dataset and in turn, helping urban planners and transportation experts in their communities to understand mobility patterns. In turn this helps to identify opportunities for investment and evaluate the impact of infrastructure changes, giving more opportunity through improved transportation access.
On a global scale, Strava data shows that there has been a higher adoption of cycling commutes in the past year, with Paris leading the way with 97% growth as a result of subsequent investment into cycling infrastructure:
- Paris (+97%)
- Rio de Janeiro (+62%)
- Berlin (+57%)
- Tokyo (+46%)
- Munich (+41%)
Jérôme Sorrel, author & cycle commute commentator, said “Regardless of your motivation to choose active commuting, whether it’s walking, cycling, running rather than riding a motorbike or driving a car, one motivation which can bring people together is finding a way to reduce our carbon footprint.
“It is great to see this product update from Strava to monitor all the carbon savings I’ve made by choosing to cycle every day.”
