In September 2020, Bouteco joined Tourism Declares a Climate Emergency — a travel-industry alliance raising awareness of climate change and sharing practical solutions crowdsourced from its members.
We committed to publishing our own Climate Emergency Plan within a year, which would involve setting out how we intended to reduce our carbon emissions by at least 55% this decade. We also pledged to share our expertise, use our voice to advocate for positive change, and to encourage others to join in. Well, we've made a start.
We’re working with Charlie Cotton at ecollective to generate personalised metrics to accurately quantify and track our footprint, at work and at home. In doing so, we hope to inspire you to travel better, while we share our journey towards Net Zero. And until then we will continue to invest in decarbonising initiatives to mitigate what we can’t eliminate.
Conscious tourism can be a powerful force for social and economic good, uplifting and connecting communities, bridging geographic and cultural divides, and protecting vulnerable ecosystems, people and places — but we can’t ignore the associated carbon cost. This is why we mix our stories of positive-impact travel with practical advice on squaring this circle, and why we are constantly looking for practical steps we can take to mitigate our own (tiny) organisation’s part in the Climate Emergency.
With so many of us now working from home, we can’t ignore our personal activities when it comes to crunching the business numbers. Online tools are a good way to get started and do allow you to measure and track your impact so long as your answers appear in the dropdown menus.
Here is a start of the BOUTECO Climate Emergency Plan v1.0.
Measure
We are quantifying our existing carbon footprint.
As two individuals — Ben and Juliet
As an organisation — really, that's just the two of us and any projects we take on.
Attribute a proportion of personal / household emissions to homeworking.
Identify and rank the most carbon-intensive of these activities.
Work with an independent third party to ensure accuracy and transparency.
It will be a challenge to determine a representative figure during a pandemic/lockdown.
Our calculations will be based on an average figure for the previous three years.
Reduce
Our target is a minimum 55% reduction (per person) by 2026.
Develop a strategy to combat CO2 emissions as an organisation and as individuals.
Prioritise the most CO2 intensive activities.
Our target equates to an annualised 9% reduction compounded over nine years.
Offset
We will offset 125% of whatever we cannot eradicate.
Choose an ethical partner sharing our passion for Conservation, Community, Culture & Commerce.
Treesisters is Bouteco’s existing chosen tree-planting partner.
Review
Review progress annually against 9% target.
Update goals based on performance, new information, better practice.
Publish
We will publish an annual report of our progress on our website and through our social media channels.
In addition to cutting our own direct carbon emissions in line with IPCC advice, we acknowledge our responsibility to use our platform to inform and influence our audience.
We will continue to shine a light on environmentally and socially exemplary businesses, assist others on their journey to sustainability, and will challenge those who could do better to improve.
Choose
We acknowledge the impact our personal decisions have on the planet.
Each transaction can have a positive social and environmental impact.
This is especially true in relation to emission-intensive products and services.
We will use every purchase as an opportunity to make a carbon-conscious choice.
Learn
We will continue to study the climate emergency and sustainable ways to combat it.
Look at alternative production processes and the impact of consumable products.
Take part in ongoing professional development and continue to seek best practise.
We acknowledge the potential negative impact of travel and tourism and will always look for ways to mitigate any negative environmental and social impact.
Share
We will share information directly with our partners and suppliers.
Help others measure and reduce their carbon footprint.
Continue to build awareness of the climate emergency through social media channels.
Publish stories that highlight the Climate Emergency
Encourage others to develop their own Climate Emergency Plan.
Motivate our audience to measure, reduce, offset their carbon emissions.
Signpost Tourism Declares and amplify key messages.
BOUTECO steers readers towards the best, most sustainable, design-led hotels. We are not a booking platform and do not directly control the carbon emissions of our end users in the way a service provider can, but we are in a position to influence consumers’ actions and habits. And we do our best!
Engage
We will interact positively to inform others, challenge their preconceptions and inspire them to make positive changes.
Participate in industry discussions and wider forums.
Advocate for a lower-carbon travel industry.
Avoid existing solely in an environmental echo-chamber.
We will engage with consumers and policymakers, share alternatives to conventional thinking and demonstrate the positive consequences of alternative actions.
Teach
Cut through the green noise.
Call-out greenwashing.
Promote ecollective’s services to encourage all businesses to understand, measure and reduce their impact.
Assist consultancy clients on their journey to greater sustainability.
Focus our consultancy activities where regenerative outcomes are achievable.
Spread the word on best practice.
Disseminate information to clients.
Work with partners who are willing to adapt/adopt.
Cooperate
We will partner with and support other businesses which share our objectives.
Our incorporation, business model and organisational structure will reflect environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) priorities.
Commuting
The assumption is that we will continue to work from home.
Business travel
We acknowledge that some business travel is unavoidable, but we’ll primarily travel only when online meetings aren’t an option.
Favour the least CO2-intensive travel option.
Consider the involvement of locally based consultants and freelancers to avoid unnecessary trips (and promote sustainable communities).
Consumables
We will avoid using office consumables and will only print documents when absolutely necessary on FSC compliant paper with non-toxic (water-based) inks.
What can’t be reduced or reused will be recycled.
Communications
Virtual meetings by default (unless local).
Minimal mail-outs but all stationery on recycled paper.
Calculate digital footprint of newsletters and continue to investigate greener tech and software for their distribution.
Online footprint
Choose off-site data storage solutions powered by renewable energy.
Prefer ISPs powered by renewable energy.
Avoid unnecessary online storage.
Delete unwanted / duplicate information.
Monitor and minimise the size of our website
Use a positive impact search engine.
Power
We’ll choose green-energy suppliers where it is available and suggest others do the same.
Reduce consumption where possible.
Choose energy-efficient replacements for end-of-life electronic equipment.
It’s time to get personal
Starting with a blank spreadsheet is a daunting exercise but coming up with a figure which reflects your personal circumstances is not only satisfying but can highlight some interesting and sometimes amusing anomalies. It’s also an opportunity to better understand the science and dig into the data behind the headlines (if that’s your thing).
I live in rural part of a country (South Africa) with little public transport and no access to green electricity (unless you make it yourself). Once you run the figures, it soon becomes apparent that these are the two biggest problems I have, so reducing my power consumption (currently 34% of my footprint) and lift sharing (transport accounts for 30%) are priorities for me this year.
On the other hand, we are not connected to municipal water or sewage (clean water has a surprisingly large carbon footprint, 1% of total UK emissions, or closer to 6% if you include the energy used to heat it, according to the Environment Agency), collect rainwater and recycle our grey-water into our very productive vegetable garden. What we can’t grow ourselves can be mostly be sourced from local suppliers, so food mileage is low, as is our food waste (globally 8% of C02 emissions) as what little we don’t eat goes back into the garden as compost. We have also planted hundreds of trees in our part of the world.
I thought we were doing well in terms of impact from our food choices (local, seasonal, low in meat and dairy and high in legumes – less than 10% of our total) until I looked at what our dogs ate.
According to what little information is available on the subject, their combined canine pawprint is similar to that of an annual return flight from London to NYC (1.8 t CO2). On the subject of food, when I was looking for potential power savings, I discovered that unplugging my laptop at night for five years (instead of leaving it on standby) would save the same carbon as that emitted by one cheeseburger (a useful measure).
A few years ago, Juliet downsized from a four-bedroom house to a small two-bedroom apartment, sold her electric car and relies on walking, public transport and occasional electric-engine taxis. She switched to Good Energy power supply, recycles fastidiously (but questions how good her council is at making the most of this). She's careful to consider provenance whether it's food or fashion and made a pledge at the start of 2019 to minimise buying new clothes, and now mostly rents or buys second-hand from charity shops. She is a flexitarian, but only eats meat sourced from high-welfare organic sources such as the Ethical Butcher. Her blind spots include a penchant for relaxing baths and during the pandemic, supermarket deliveries where too much produce comes wrapped in plastic and takeaway-delivery services rather cooking from scratch. She avoids chemicals in her home (favouring refillable and chemical-free products). This all seems small and trivial, but and we know we can always do better — but doing something is better than nothing. If you’re curious about what your personal footprint might be, a great first step is measuring your impact through apps such as WWF’s Ecological Footprint calculator, which considers your energy use, food preferences, shelter, and consumer choices. We don’t believe in offsetting being the answer — but we do donate and fundraise for TreeSisters, which helps plant trees.