Exodus Travels and Sustainability: People, Places and Planet Plan
The travel industry is widely regarded as one of the key contributors to global warming. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, the industry creates roughly 10% of the world’s carbon emissions.
However, there are companies in the sector taking action to improve their sustainability – and European tour specialist Exodus Travels is a great example of this. In their recent sustainability report, they set out their People Places and Planet Plan to execute their vision: “Improve life through travel, for the places we visit, the people we meet and the planet we explore.”
In this article, we’ll examine each pillar of the plan and explain the steps Exodus Travels is taking to build a better future.
People
The ‘people’ pillar of the plan is all about engaging with communities across the many destinations that Exodus Travels conducts tours in.
The lives of more than five thousand people living in hard-to-reach places were improved through the different projects of the Exodus Travels Foundation. These projects included:
- Planting trees
- Distributing emergency food parcels
- Serving hot meals to school children
- Giving children educational opportunities
- And improving the standards of living of countless native animals
Places
This pillar is all about seeking to protect and benefit the places visited on tours. Exodus Travels mainly focuses on nature conservation and regeneration projects in order to do this.
One of the most significant ways they’ve done this is by partnering with biodiversity experts Rewilding Europe. Together, they launched a special initiative in the Italian Apennines called the Nature and Carbon Corridors project. The aim of this project is to provide a rich carbon sink that could remove as much as 85,000 tonnes of carbon over five years.
Planet
This pillar of the People, Places & Planet plan is all about how Exodus takes action on global climate change.
In the first place, this means seeking to understand, reduce, and mitigate the carbon footprint of their offices across the UK, North America, and Australia, as well as the wide range of different trips they offer.
Working with a third-party consultancy, they chose six representative trips from the Exodus portfolio. Carbon emissions were measured across transport, accommodation, activities, food, and plastics.
At the start of 2021, they set a science-based goal to reduce total carbon footprint by 50%.
Exodus Travels: Building a better future
In the face of uncertainty and the impact of the impending climate crisis and biodiversity loss that our planet faces, Exodus are a company truly striving to act on the fundamental belief that travel enriches, elevates, and restores.
The pillars of their People, Places and Planet Plan are a strong indicator of how well they’re doing in that endeavour – and this plan will help them build towards a better future for both the travel sector and the natural world.