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Our Climate Commitment
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We care passionately about the people and places we work with and fully recognise our responsibility towards them. This includes recognising the environmental impact of travel, and its role in the climate crisis. We’re working to maximise the good that travel does and encourage longer, deeper and more meaningful trips – and we’ve gone one step further with our Climate Commitment:
- To measure our carbon emissions and set ambitious reduction targets
- To offset the carbon emissions we cannot reduce (including Every Trip)
- To work with other like-minded travel companies to find solutions
- To become a fully carbon neutral business by 2025
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A Climate Emergency
Our planet is facing a climate and biodiversity crisis. The places and people we visit, work with and care deeply about are increasingly under threat. At Inside Travel Group we recognise the very real risks of global warming from human-generated emissions on the environment, biodiversity and people’s livelihoods.
We know our trips can have numerous positive impacts on our destinations, including contributing to economic development, supporting intercultural understanding and promoting conservation efforts. However, as a travel company that is part of a sector that accounted for 8% of global carbon emissions prior to 2020, we acknowledge both the environmental impact of flying to our destinations and the lack of current alternatives for our clients to do so.
That’s why in December 2020, we declared a Climate Emergency , along with a collective of like-minded organisations in the travel industry. We commit to science-based targets and working together to find solutions, and our strategy is formalised in our Climate Action Plan.
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The 'Action' in our Climate Action Plan
We already plan our trips so that you experience your destination as locals do, using public transport where possible and immersing yourself in local restaurants and our favourite accommodation.
However, as a company with a large carbon footprint, we know we have a large responsibility to measure, reduce and offset it.We measure the carbon emissions from our staff air travel and offices, as well as an average total from our trips; we set out ambitious reduction targets for our operations; and we offset all the carbon emissions we measure, both from our operations and every trip.
Yes, you did read that correctly – our 'Every Trip Offset' policy means that we’ll balance out the carbon emissions from your flights and ground arrangements through our award-winning, Gold Standard carbon offset scheme, which supports the Household Biogas Project in Vietnam.
This is all part of our aim to become a fully carbon positive business by 2025 (including all bookings and internal operation emissions).
Read more about our Every Trip Offset policy.
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Climate Co-operation
While we’ve made a good start, we’re fully aware that we can’t tackle the climate crisis alone. That’s why we’ve partnered with like-minded organisations in the travel industry to drastically reduce emissions and come up with solutions.
We declared a Climate Emergency in December 2020, joining a growing collective of organisations in the travel industry, and contributing to Climate Action Plan blueprints for the rest of the travel industry to use to tackle their carbon emissions.
We are also active members of the Sustainability Committee of AITO (Association of Independent Tour Operators in the UK), and have been since 2012. This year we’ve been developing sustainability toolkits for over 100 Tour Operator members of AITO – to educate, engage with and encourage wider movement on an industry level towards tackling the climate crisis.
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There's more work to do
We’re proud of what we’ve achieved so far, but we know there’s a long way to go. As a travel company that encourages people to fly around the world to visit incredible places (and bring a host of benefits too), we know that just by talking about the climate crisis we’re opening ourselves up to criticism of greenwashing.
We see it as our responsibility to engage with the challenges we face, and we’re not going to shy away from them. We also know that it’s the right thing to do.
We would love to hear from you if you have comments, ideas and questions about our sustainability commitments to help us improve. Just email [email protected]
We’re not perfect and we don’t know all the answers, but that’s what gives us the motivation to get up every day and do better. We’re always open to debate, discuss and collaborate with our partners and our competitors. We are stronger together. And we need to act.
Read our full report on how we’re working to tackle the climate crisis in our Climate Action Plan.
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