Carbon Offsets: The GeoEx Response
Recently in this space I wrote about the panel on “Carbon Offsets – Science, Debate & Solutions” at the Adventure Travel Trade Association Summit in Whistler. Near the end of my comments, I wrote: “One thing emerged crystal clear: There is a great and urgent need for more scientific analysis of the actual effects of our carbon footprint, and for more rigorous study of the efficacy of different programs designed to offset that footprint.”
Geographic Expeditions, a member of the Adventure Collection, is one company that has addressed this need. GeoEx has recently concluded an extremely rigorous and meticulous, multi-year study and analysis of its carbon footprint and its wider environmental and cultural impacts at home and in the field, and has designed an impressively comprehensive and wide-ranging response. This response includes an extraordinary commitment to donate 1 percent of its revenues (that’s sales, not profits) to conservation, cultural resource protection, education, and health care projects in 2008.
The company recently released a pair of position papers for colleagues and clients outlining its findings and efforts. I think they are laudable enough to reprint here. The first is entitled “Responsible Travel: Walking the Talk.” The second is “Carbon Footprint Methodology.”
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1. RESPONSIBLE TRAVEL: WALKING THE TALK
Geographic Expeditions is a proud founding member of the Adventure Collection, an alliance of ten of the world’s finest travel companies, committed to excellence, personal service, innovation, and enriching travel experiences around the world.
Adventure Collection members actively embrace the following mission statement:The Adventure Collection is committed to the cultural and environmental well-being of the places we visit. We follow scientifically supported on-the-ground and at-sea minimum-impact practices. We seek to create inspirational experiences for our travelers, and we partner with a wide array of nonprofit organizations that further these objectives.
Of course, it’s easy to say that we’re dedicated to conservation, eco-friendliness, fighting climate change, etc. The reality is more complicated and demanding, and we’re the first to acknowledge that bringing travelers to remote and not-so-remote places inevitably has local and global environmental and cultural impacts. But — and this is something to which we devote continual thought — we believe fervently that our trips provide meaningful and important ways for local communities and governments to create sustainable forms of development, which in turn relieves pressure on resources. Our more-than-a-quarter-of-a-century of experience has taught us that, when it’s intelligently done, travel is a net plus for the visitor and the visited alike. Here are the major ways GeoEx enthusiastically puts into practice the strategic principles we developed with our Adventure Collection colleagues.
Accountability in the Communities Where Our Office is Located
We’re big believers in walking the talk at home in order to be effective advocates for change abroad. GeoEx’s San Francisco office is located in the beautiful Presidio’s Thoreau Center for Sustainability. The Thoreau Center represents the cutting edge in sustainable architecture, recycling, energy conservation, volunteering, and public transportation. It is worth noting that in 2007 GeoEx provides its employees with financial incentives to use public transportation and in 2007 will help underwrite the cost of the local Presidi-Go bus between the Thoreau Center and mass transit facilities. GeoEx also has a finely-tuned direct-marketing program aimed at greatly reducing the amount of unwanted and undelivered direct mail, and we print with soy inks and UV coatings on tree-free paper or high-quality recycled stock supplied by companies certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
Accountability in the Field
GeoEx works diligently with conservation organizations and our partners in the field to develop practices that minimize our footprint and generate meaningful contributions to local economies. In 2007 we worked closely with the United National Environment Program (UNEP) and Conservation International to develop a best practices manual for mountain tourism and rainforest tourism. We’re also mindful that our partners may have different conservation perspectives, and taking those into careful consideration, we work with local people in developing itineraries and routes; in selecting hotels, boats, and other transportation; in choosing informed local guides; in educating our travelers about local conditions and customs; and in adhering to minimum-impact standards for all our tours, treks, and voyages.
Giving Back
GeoEx supports a broad array of conservation, cultural resource protection, education, and health care organizations, including the Central Asian Institute, the Snow Leopard Trust, the American Himalayan Foundation, the Solar Electric Light Fund, and the Trust for Public Land (a complete list, with descriptions and contact information, is available on our web site). GeoEx will ratchet up our commitment by allocating 1 percent of our tour sales (as opposed to profits) for a wide array of conservation, cultural resource protection, education, and health care, including offsetting the carbon footprint the land and sea elements of our trips via alternative energy technologies administered by the Climate Trust (www.climatetrust.org).
Giving Back: Your Opportunity
The mantra is important and familiar: Keep abreast of global developments in conservation and sustainability. Act locally (and consistently). Cut down on waste, reuse, recycle, rethink priorities. Walk, run, bike, use public transportation, join a car pool. Put your talents to use with organizations trying to get the world on the right track. Vote. Think. Enjoy the world with loving care. In 2008 GeoEx will provide all travelers who contribute $250 or more to the Living Planet Trust (a donor-directed fund administered by the Tides Foundation of San Francisco) with a $250 travel voucher toward a future trip. These tax-deductible donations to the Living Planet Trust will used to offset the air travel and support NGO’s that GeoEx is supporting in the destination the traveler has just experienced.
The Bottom Line
Jan Morris said it for us: “If you love something hotly enough, consciously, with care, it becomes yours by symbiosis, irrevocably.” The key word is care. And with love and care comes responsibility.
We, like so many of our caring travelers, are dedicated to living up to our responsibilities to the places that have touched, inspired, and given us so much joy. We invite you to contact us with questions and comments, and to learn more about our irrevocable commitment to responsible travel by visiting our web site.
2. CARBON FOOTPRINT METHODOLOGY
The GeoEx carbon offset strategy acknowledges an absence of a universally accepted standard to measure carbon footprints associated with adventure travel activities. In this context we have employed a calculus that we believe significantly overestimates our in-the-office and in-the-field resource consumption for areas where quantification is possible in order to account for the myriad of resources that are impractical to measure. This methodology has been reviewed and validated by our partners at the The Climate Trust (www.climatetrust.org).
LOCAL OPERATIONS
To offset our office footprint, we calculate commuter miles, office energy use, international air travel undertaken by our staff, and annual shipping/mailing volume. We insert these data into calculators supplied by The Climate Trust to derive an annual C02 footprint estimate.
Commuter Miles
Using tools from Google Maps, we calculate the distance between our headquarters and home addresses for all staff. Even though 40 percent of our employees walk or bike to work or take public transportation, we conservatively estimate a daily commute carbon footprint based on all employees driving to work 240 days per year using a vehicle that gets 20 mpg.
Office Energy Use
Actual electrical usage is calculated based on utility bills.
International Air Transportation
Our footprint calculation in this area is achieved by multiplying the number of staff trips by 16,000 miles, which is the roundtrip distance between San Francisco and Bangkok. An audit of recent staff travel indicates that the majority of our staff trips involve far fewer miles than this benchmark, so our aggregate footprint is comfortably overestimated.
SHIPPING AND MARKETING
The vast bulk of our shipping and freight volume is associated with an annual catalog printed in China. Our carbon footprint calculation takes into account trans-Pacific shipping tonnage, then over-estimates domestic mailing distance by assuming every single catalog is mailed first-class from our mailing house in Northern California to Portland, Maine. All pre- and post-departure mailings to clients are similarly assumed to make the long trip to Portland, Maine.
OVERSEAS OPERATIONS
We have examined and quantified the footprint for what we consider to be the most resource-intensive itineraries we currently offer (excluding private jet itineraries), including a touring/safari itinerary across Southern Africa and a ground tour in Bhutan. Because not every single input is practical to quantify, we significantly overestimated those elements that are quantifiable. For example:
• Full driving distances are assigned to each traveler, even though more than one person may
share a vehicle.• Trip driving distances assume 5 hours/ per day of driving for the whole itinerary, averaging 15 mph (75 mi/day), using a 10 mpg diesel jeep, even though most tours include far less driving in more fuel-efficient vehicles than this.
• All itineraries are assumed to utilize luxury hotels with a daily carbon footprint of 66 pounds of C02/client/night (double the suggested figure estimated by Sustainable Travel International, STI) even though some trips utilize more modest accommodation or camping.
Using formulas and calculators supplied by The Climate Trust and Sustainable Travel International, we conclude that the vast majority of trips yield a footprint of less than 0.1 metric tons C02 /client/day (excluding air travel). For 2008, GeoEx will purchase offsets for an aggregate total of passenger days times this multiplier, effectively offsetting all ground travel footprints generated by our clients. We recognize that there is tremendous variability in the actual execution of any given itinerary but are comfortable that our general approach of over-estimation adequately compensates for this variability.
Air travel offsets are calculated based on actual mileage flown and are purchased separately if a client elects to make a $250 or greater contribution to the Living Planet Trust. For the small number of private jet itineraries we run, a carbon offset of appropriate volume will be purchased for that trip even if clients do not elect to make the $250 contribution to the Living Planet Trust.
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What do you think about these documents? Do they present a blueprint for sustainability? Do you or does your company have a similar set of conclusions, practices and goals? I'd like to hear them. Email me at don@adventurecollection.com. Thanks, and happy responsible travels!
