To mark Clean Air Day today Stagecoach East Midlands is highlighting its commitment to sustainable travel and thanking their customers who reduce their carbon footprint by choosing to travel by bus.

Implementing sustainable green travel is a key focus for Stagecoach East Midlands, and the bus operator has recently achieved several key milestones in their mission to tackle climate change and improve air quality.

In the last decade, Stagecoach has invested £1 billion in 7,000 new greener vehicles and technologies – more than any other bus operator in the UK.

They were recently awarded the Carbon Trust Standard for measuring, managing and reducing their global carbon footprint, becoming the first public transport operator to have its boundaries certified outside of Europe.

In 2019, the bus operator invested £5.7m in a state-of-the-art fleet of 31 environmentally friendly vehicles for Hull. The high-spec vehicles are fitted with Euro VI engines with low emissions and the latest start/stop technology, producing fewer emissions overall than a Euro 6 diesel car, and ten times fewer on a per passenger basis.

Matt Cranwell, managing director of Stagecoach East Midlands, said: “We are committed to supporting the fight against climate change and are proud of the work we have achieved so far.

“We would like to use Clean Air Day to thank all of our customers who choose to play their part by traveling on the bus. Independent research carried out by the Centre for Economics and Business Research shows that without Stagecoach bus services, there would be an annual increase of 190,000 tonnes of CO2 through passengers using alternative transport, mainly cars, and that £343 million in potential congestion-related savings are delivered by Stagecoach from a reduction of 1.22 billion miles of traffic. Without our customers choosing to travel by bus this would not be possible.”

Stagecoach East Midlands is one of only 80 companies publicly listed in the UK to have received the new London Stock Exchange (LSE) Green Economy Mark. The mark identifies sectors that are contributors to a greener, more sustainable economy such as through climate change mitigation and adaptation. It looks beyond solely clean technology companies to highlight businesses driving the transition to a sustainable, low carbon economy.

Matt Cranwell continued: “Whilst we are proud of our achievements to date, we realise that there is still a lot of work to do, to achieve clear air travel solutions. We have made a public commitment to achieve a zero carbon fleet by 2035 which will be driven by a multi-technology vehicle strategy, including electric and hydrogen buses, and will continue to work with people in the communities we serve to provide safe, reliable and comfortable travel solutions which encourage people to try bus travel rather than taking the car.”