The Carbon Impact of Travel – Offsetting it the Beyonder way
We love travelling… And if you are reading this here, chances are, you are no different…
But then, an element of doubt or guilt creeps in to sully the joy a bit when one hears of the ‘side-effects of travelling’ – are we harming the environment in our zeal to travel? Concepts like “Carbon off-setting”, “Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints”, “Sustainable tourism”, “Responsible Tourism”, “Ethical tourism”.. the list goes on – leaving us baffled!
Every action of ours – right from taking a flight or a car to travel to a destination, staying at a hotel, even eating food would have some impact on the carbon output in the environment. Does that mean we shut ourselves out from the world and try to live out an isolated zero carbon emissions environment?
Absolutely not! The benefits of travelling, both to the Individual and to the community, far outweigh the impact. But then, as conscientious beings, it is our responsibility to take concrete steps to minimize the impact of our travel to the extent possible – on the environment and on all the living beings that we share our planet with!
As a travel company, we have long debated on how we could contribute our little bit in this mission. In our small way, we try and impose the sustainability principles with our partners. Other than this soft persuasion, we decided that a positive action from our side is essential to demonstrate our organizational commitment – a way to somehow offset the impact of the travel that we facilitate.
We have partnered with Grow-trees.com, an online platform – which offers services to grow trees in a systematic fashion in pursuance of its vision of doing social good. The endeavor is to offset the carbon footprint of every trip facilitated by Beyonder by planting the appropriate number of trees.
In pursuance of this effort, for every trip made by our guests, we compute the approximate carbon emissions on account of the travel – using the simple carbon calculator on https://climatecare.org/calculator/
How many trees would we plan to offset this carbon footprint? There is a tremendous variation between tree species on the amount of carbon sequestered every year – ranging from 25 kgs to 550 kgs / year. Refer this study on https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254319993_A_Sustainability_Initiative_to_Quantify_Carbon_Sequestration_by_Campus_Trees
We are assuming a conservative 25kgs / year of carbon sequestration and the lifespan of a tree at 20 years (the actual life span on an average can exceed 50 years – but we are discounting it by nearly 60% to account for the chances of a tree sapling surviving to maturity). Given this, we come to the approximate figure of 2 trees to be planted (through Grow Trees) for every tonne of carbon emission.
We have had lots of debates with friends and well-wishers on whether this is the right way to go about our goals on carbon offsetting/ conservation – whether it is like compensating for ‘sins’, whether neutrality is achieved etc… However controversial, debatable or inadequate this measure may seem to be – we, at Beyonder, honestly believe that this is our small contribution to a better world!
Our guests who travel with us would participate indirectly in this effort: each guest from Beyonder would get an e-Tree Certificate from grow-trees.com post their travel (number of trees would depend on the value of the package). This would enable the traveller to check where his/her tree has been planted and know a little more on the project (Tree planting) to which they have contributed! Guests also have an option to require Beyonder to plant extra trees (over and above the Beyonder commitment) on payment.
To know more on carbon off-setting and to compute how much carbon you have offset through this initiative – check out: https://www.grow-trees.com/offset.php
While we contribute in planting trees for most of the travel done by our guests (unless expressly requested otherwise by our guests); for guests who travel with us to Africa, we instead contribute towards conservations efforts in Africa. The stellar, heroic efforts of the rangers of Virunga National Park (www.virunga.org) is an inspiration to us at Beyonder. For every guest who travels with Beyonder to Sub-Saharan Africa, we contribute a small sum to the Park as our bit towards this cause. Refer more about this on our Virungas Conservation Initiative.