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Carbon Labelling

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Carbon Labelling

Making It Simple

There is no getting away from the fact that in the world of carbon emissions, footprints and calculators can be rather complex.

For several years, we have wanted to devise an approach that would allow our travellers to meaningfully understand how to make holiday choices that are better for the planet.

Working with the eCollective, we have developed one of the world’s first carbon labelling schemes for travel. In much the same way as you can see the number of calories on a packet of cereal or bar of chocolate, each and every one of our trips now has a carbon label or score indicating the amount of kilogrammes of carbon attributed to each traveller.

How on earth have we managed to work this out and what do the numbers actually mean? Those are both great questions which we hope we can explain below.

How Did We Calculate
The Kg of Carbon per Traveller?

We’ll be honest and say this wasn’t easy. It’s been a big project, with several years spent on the drawing board and then three months of solid work to achieve the results we were looking for.

Almost everything in our day to day lives has some sort of footprint and our holidays are no different.

Using emission figures provided by DEFRA (Department for Environment, Forestry and Rural Affairs in the UK), and by surveying 300+ accommodation partners we have managed to calculate the carbon footprint of every element of our trips from the vehicle used to get you around, to the accommodation you sleep in, the food you eat and the activities we provide. Where we have been able to get the data, the calculation uses actual emission figures rather than those provided by DEFRA.

Each trip also includes a pro-rata allocation of the carbon emissions arising from the wider operation of our business which includes the office, staff travel and running the websites.

Hopefully, you’re still with us at this point but it’s important to say that although our calculation system isn’t perfect, it is highly accurate and based on science. Most importantly, it allows us to see what we can improve and by calculating every element of the business we can see where to focus our attention in order to achieve the emission reduction targets we have set.

What Do The Numbers Actually Mean?

How much is 100kg of carbon and is this a good or bad figure? When we started out on this project, we were as in the dark as you may be now. Rather than providing a colour coding scheme or similar to suggest one of our holidays is better for the planet than the other, we’ve chosen to approach this differently.

Below you can see how the average carbon emissions per traveller on a Wilderness Trip of 7 days/ 6 nights look compared to other types of holiday and a selection of activities that are part of our daily lives. It is also helpful to know that the current global average per day is 14kg of CO2 (India = 5kg, UK = 15kg, US & Canada = 38kg and Australia = 42kg). Scientists consider that an average of 10kg of CO2 is what is truly sustainable in the long-term.