Travel Lighter
Estimate your personal footprint for a Green Yogi Traveler retreat — your travel, local transport, room and diet all included.
Every Green Yogi Traveler retreat carries a measured carbon footprint, in kilograms of CO2e per person. Your footprint has two parts — and we show our working for both.
How you get from home to the start of the retreat — flight, train, bus, ferry, car or campervan. For most guests this is the largest share of the whole footprint.
Everything we organise on the ground:
The key idea is below each heading. Click “See the exact factors” to open the full table we use — for each transport type, room and meal.
You choose one or more ways you'll travel from home and enter the hours for each. Flights, trains, buses and ferries are counted per person; cars and campervans are counted per vehicle and then split between everyone travelling in it.
| Transport | kg CO2e / hour | Counted |
|---|---|---|
| Flight | 110 | per person |
| Train | 0.6 | per person |
| Bus | 2.4 | per person |
| Ferry | 5.3 | per person |
| Car (petrol) | 16.8 | per vehicle |
| Car (diesel) | 16.9 | per vehicle |
| Car (LPG) | 17.6 | per vehicle |
| Car (electric) | 4.6 | per vehicle |
| Car (hybrid) | 12.7 | per vehicle |
| Campervan (petrol) | 19.8 | per vehicle |
| Campervan (diesel) | 21.8 | per vehicle |
Our groups are small, so the emissions per person depend on how many of you share the vehicle. For 1–4 guests we use a mid-size car, for 5–8 a van, and larger groups use a combination. We also measure ferries, excursion speedboats and sailing where a retreat uses them.
Land transport — per person, per kilometre
| Group size | Vehicle(s) | kg CO2e per person/km |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 car | 0.209 |
| 2 | 1 car | 0.105 |
| 3 | 1 car | 0.070 |
| 4 | 1 car | 0.052 |
| 5 | 1 van | 0.052 |
| 6 | 1 van | 0.043 |
| 7 | 1 van | 0.037 |
| 8 | 1 van | 0.032 |
| 9 | 1 car + 1 van | 0.052 |
| 10 | 1 car + 1 van | 0.047 |
| 11 | 1 car + 1 van | 0.042 |
| 12 | 2 vans | 0.043 |
| 13 | 2 vans | 0.040 |
| 14 | 2 vans | 0.037 |
| 15 | 2 vans | 0.034 |
| 16 | 2 vans | 0.032 |
Base factors: mid-size car (diesel) 0.2091 kg CO2e/km; van (diesel) 0.25799 kg CO2e/km. Multiplied by the kilometres driven during the retreat.
Sea transport
| Type | kg CO2e / km |
|---|---|
| Public ferry — per person | 0.02295 |
| Public ferry — per person travelling with a vehicle | 0.15865 |
| Excursion speedboat (200 HP, petrol) — whole boat | 3.234 |
| Sailing catamaran (occasional diesel motor) — whole boat | 0.407 |
Boat figures are for the whole vessel and divided by the number of people aboard. Most retreats use land transport only; sailing trips use sailing only; island-hopping retreats combine land and sailing.
We count the emissions of your room per night, based on the type of property. Sharing a room splits that figure between you — so a double room is half, a triple a third.
| Property type | kg CO2e / room / night |
|---|---|
| 2-star hotel & private accommodation | 6 |
| 3-star hotel | 9.7 |
| 4-star hotel | 11.9 |
| 5-star hotel | 19.6 |
Food matters more than most people expect. A vegan or vegetarian menu has a markedly lower footprint than a mixed-diet one — here are the per-meal figures we use.
| Meal | Vegan | Vegetarian | Mixed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Breakfast | 0.40 | 1.63 | 3.84 |
| Lunch / dinner | 0.65 | 3.30 | 4.01 |
Figures in kg CO2e per meal, per person, multiplied by the number of breakfasts and main meals during the retreat.
Your guide travels with you, so their accommodation and meals are part of the retreat's footprint too. We add them in and divide them across all the guests.
| Group size | Guide assumption |
|---|---|
| 1–8 guests | 1 guide — single room, mixed diet |
| 9–16 guests | 2 guides — sharing a double room, mixed diet |
That's kilograms of carbon-dioxide equivalent — the standard unit that rolls all greenhouse gases into one comparable number, shown per person so you can see your own impact.
Each retreat shows a default footprint for the in-destination services (local transport, accommodation, meals and guide), worked out with conservative assumptions — single-room occupancy and a vegetarian menu.
The calculator then adds your travel to the destination, so you get a total that's specific to you — and you can see how a train instead of a flight, a shared room, or a plant-based menu changes it.
It stands for kilograms of carbon-dioxide equivalent — the standard unit that combines all greenhouse gases into one comparable figure, expressed per person.
Flights and long car journeys emit far more per hour than the services during a retreat. For many guests, how they reach the destination is the single largest factor — which is why the calculator lets you compare transport options.
Each retreat shows a default footprint covering the in-destination services (local transport, accommodation, meals and guide) using conservative assumptions — single-room occupancy and a vegetarian diet. Add your own travel to the destination in the calculator to get your personal total.
Take the train or bus instead of flying where you can, share a car with other guests, choose a vegetarian or vegan menu, share a room, and consider a destination closer to home. The calculator shows the impact of each choice.
Our conversion factors are drawn from recognised, published greenhouse-gas emission datasets used across the travel industry. We're happy to share our sources on request.
Yes — we are a Travelife Partner, which means our sustainability practices are independently audited. The footprint method itself is our own and fully transparent, which is why we publish it here.
Browse our retreats, or plan your own — we'll handle the logistics and the footprint.