With Earth Day as a backdrop, The Travel Corporation (TTC) has announced that it intends to achieve carbon neutrality as a company by 2030. Efforts by the travel giant, which includes Trafalgar, Insight, Contiki, and Uniworld River Cruises amongst its 40 global brands, includes a five-step climate action plan, investment in two developing carbon removal projects, and the launch of a sustainability “Impact Hub.”
The company says it recognizes its role and responsibility in creating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through its trips and operations and that the need for both travellers and businesses to take action to address GHG emissions and climate change “becomes clearer and more urgent every day.”
As such, TTC has released a five-point plan that includes:
• Measure – Measure the emissions from TTC business and trips.
• Reduce – Build on reduction efforts and set ambitious reduction targets by mid-2022.
• Remove – Through TTC’s TreadRight Foundation, invest in new technology and nature-based solutions to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere.
• Offset – Purchase carbon credits to offset unavoidable emissions, including phasing in carbon neutral trips between 2022 and ‘30.
• Evolve – Continue to learn from others, invest in new technologies, and support strategic alliances that enable us and the industry to move to a low carbon economy.
The measures are designed to support and enhance current TTC sustainability goals, first launched in 2015, and ultimately achieve carbon neutrality by the end of the decade.
Additionally, to support its transition to a low-carbon future, TTC and its TreadRight Foundation are investing US$100,000 in two nature-based carbon removal solutions, Project Vesta and GreenWave. And TreadRight has also launched a new Impact Hub in an effort to be transparent as to progress towards its 11 sustainability goals, while also providing tips to travellers on how they can help.
The targets, which include sourcing 50% of electricity from renewable sources across the organization by 2025, will apply to TTC’s 20-plus offices, 18 Red Carnation Hotels, 13 Uniworld ships, six accommodations/facilities, 500-plus vehicles, and more than 1,500 itineraries operated worldwide by its tour and cruise brands.
Advancements to date include the installation of solar panels in 2020 at the Uniworld head office in Encino, Ca.; the implementation of a 400kW Tesla plant supplying over 95% of Xigera Safari Lodge’s energy, which opened in Botswana in December; and the recent shift to 100% renewable electricity by Contiki’s Chateau De Cruix and Haus Schöneck, as well as Red Carnation Hotel’s Ashford Castle, which sits on a 142-hectare property in Ireland.
“Our TTC Climate Action Plan is not marked by one quick fix, because there isn’t one. It is marked with the need to act now, to learn and adapt as technology and innovation support our need to transition to a low-carbon business,” states TTC chief executive Brett Tollman. “There is much debate as to the right approach when it comes to decarbonizing travel and tourism, and our position is that this must be a process that begins now and commits to evolving as the solutions continue to improve and become available to us.”
For more on the action plan, click https://Impact.TreadRight.org
