Go Local and Climate

Go Local Travel strives for a good balance between your trip and the locals. We also like to see this balance in relation to the climate. Travel to South America will by definition have an impact, but there is still much to be done.

The first step we have taken is to create our own compensation project. For example, Go Local Travel wants to contribute not only to the social aspect but also to the environment. Offsetting our C02 emissions we do directly in the country with projects that do more than just a tree.  See how it stands. For us, there are a number of aspects of concern: we want to provide an economic, social and climate advantage by compensating flights at local level.

What does our CO2 compensation program mean:

1. Growing trees goes into community management
2. From the community there are designated people who maintain the forest and earn a salary.
3. Our trees also need to yield something, for example avocado. This fruit is offered free of charge to Go Local projects and community. It’s also a perfect meat substitute!
4. Finally, the shade of the trees here in the dry part of Ecuador allows much more irrigation to take place. As a result, the community suddenly also has a high-quality vegetable garden.

The emissions from your trip can be checked in an insightful and honest way through the independent information organisation Environment Central. We’re even compensating a little more than that. For a complete trip (19 dg by transport) to Ecuador, Colombia or Peru we use 3800kg/CO2 pp. Take a look at this for the calculation and some visual examples of this amount of CO2. The concept of the level of CO2 emissions from a flight is quite debatable and, even among the renowned organisations, shocking differences emerge. We place high demands on our travels and thus on the fairness of our compensation. You will therefore see that our CO2 compensation is sometimes twice as high as commonly used compensation programs. For example, we also take the extra emissions from flies above 9000m.

Below we give an overview of the compensation for the different routes of our trips:

• An international round trip to Peru, Ecuador or Colombia: 3100kg/CO2
• A domestic flight to the Galapagos: 650kg/CO2
• A domestic flight in Ecuador, Colombia or Peru: 200kg/CO2

In addition to this flight compensation, we also have a unique itinerary focused entirely on minimum emissions. Many of the accommodations for this developed trip are also already included in our standard trip. These unique trips (which are worth while for destinations alone) are below for Ecuador, Colombia and Peru.

Finally, we have now entered our partnership with TraveLife! A crowning glory in the past year and an appointment that few small-scale travel companies can report. The assigned companies meet more than 150 criteria, related to an operator’s office, management, supply, international business partners and customer information. The Travelife Standard includes the ISO 26000 themes for corporate social responsibility, including the environment, biodiversity, human rights and industrial relations; and is formally recognised as being in full compliance with the UN-supported global criteria for sustainable tourism. Now that we have received the partnership, we can prepare for the last part namely the official certification. We will also have implemented the entire Travelife procedure in a short period of time. This means that we will quickly have an independent certification officially. We hope that our efforts will also be an encouragement to other travel companies, because there is still much to be gained! see our full climate procedures here.

Of course, we also offer a lot of variety in nature destinations during our travels. Here you will gain an even better insight into the importance of nature and the animals around you.

 

Get inspired and discover our special climate neutral travel