Intrepid Travel is putting carbon labels on more than 500 trips, including its top 100, and plans to keep measuring and sharing the emissions of every trip.
The labels, which will be on each tour’s page on the company’s website, will tell visitors how much carbon each Intrepid tour will produce. This will give the company a clearer picture of its commitment to climate-friendly travel.
The carbon label will now be shown on more than half of Intrepid’s trip pages. It will show the total CO2-e for the trip per visitor per day. The total emissions are found by adding up all the parts that contribute to the overall carbon footprint. These parts include lodging, transportation, food given during the trip, activities, and the emissions and waste from the local operations office.
The total emissions for each trip are then increased by 15% to account for anything that was missed by accident. Intrepid’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory calculation method was made to meet the best-practice standards set by Climate Active. Climate Active is a partnership between the Australian government and companies that works to get the private sector to take climate action on its own.
Carbon labelling tells people how a product or service affects the environment by giving them a CO2-e kg number, similar to a nutrition sticker. This helps people make better decisions.
As part of the launch, Intrepid paid for a new study that shows 64% of adults around the world don’t know how big their carbon footprint is. Another 60% of people are more likely to book trips with a company that is open about how they affect the environment. However, only 38% of people find it easy to find this information.
These labels will help visitors learn about their own carbon footprints and understand how they affect the world. Travellers will also be able to see how Intrepid is making up for these emissions and compare this knowledge to what they do every day.
For example, 100kg CO2-e is about the same as charging a smartphone 12,164 times or running a gas-powered car about 399 kilometres.
Intrepid is sure that carbon labelling will soon be the norm and will be used more and more by the government.
Sara King, GM of Purpose for Intrepid Travel, said, “Without higher government regulations or the need for ESG disclosure, it is nearly impossible to hold businesses accountable for reducing their emissions.”
King continued: “We cannot shy away from our impact, and we cannot effectively reduce what we do not measure. With carbon labelling, we can increase customers’ understanding of their footprint while advocating for this level of measurement and transparency to become an industry standard.”
Along with putting out carbon labels, Intrepid is still dedicated to making trips with less carbon emissions.
Compared to 2023, they will have about 4,000 fewer planes on trips in 2024, and they will stop all scenic flights.
