Shiny's Ashley Norris blogs from the carbon-neutral Eurostar

Our beloved Ashley Norris is making eco-history today by travelling on the first carbon-neutral journey from St. Pancras to Paris. Hippyshopper has been covering the event which it's heralding as a "big day for green travel". Here's the day so far in the words of Ash himself:

"The brand new station concourse is filling up, the punters are jostling towards the platform and the first Eurostar train to Paris is set to rocket out of St Pancras station in about twenty minutes time. Yet on board isn’t the usual mixture of local dignitaries, politicians in search of a photo opp and railway enthusiasts. Many of the, ahem, VIP crew for the first journey are green activists, campaigners and of course bloggers (which is where I sneaked in) here to judge for themselves the environmental credentials of Eurostar's new cross-Channel carbon-neutral service.

"It has widely accepted for some time now that the journey between London and Paris by train produces a tenth of the carbon dioxide as one using a plane (11kg as opposed to 122kg by plane). But Eurostar claims that thanks to some core changes in its service passengers can enjoy a completely carbon neutral trip.

"So can concerned environmentalists pop across the channel, and indeed travel on to the rest of Europe as many big cities like Berlin and Vienna now connect up to the network, without suffering from green guilt?

"Well for starters Eurostar is committed to filling every seat on each train - the Waterloo trains were notorious for being over crowded on occasion yet empty on others. The company has also installed energy meters to keep tabs on air conditioning and heating power consumption. The food is organic and in many instances fairly traded and virtually all the paper used on the trains are recyclable.

"The green push even extends to marketing with the service now largely being promoted via the internet (sensible move) rather than deadwood papers and magazines.

"Well that’s the theory anyhow, I’ll find out how it all works in practice soon enough."

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