Sustainability

Giving both you and the planet the break you deserve.

For the Love of Travel

Like you, we love to travel. Done well, holidays allow us to explore, have fun and learn in ways we simply
cannot if we stay at home. It is also a great way to meet new people and take a break from the stresses and
strains of day-to-day life. But our planet is in crisis and we recognise things have to change if we are to
protect the planet for future generations. The problem is how to do this without giving up the travel we
love? Our solution is Toureasy.

We are here to help you balance your love of travel with the increasingly urgent need to protect the sights
and destinations that we all so enjoy visiting. We do that by ensuring all our holidays along with our entire
back-office operation are 100% carbon neutral, giving you a certified Net Zero holiday every time.

We also believe that sustainability should come as standard and be accessible for all, which means you
shouldn’t have to do anything different or pay extra for it. That is why we guarantee that our Net Zero
holidays won’t cost you any more than travelling with any other operator.

How Do We Do It?

Whilst we along with our suppliers and partners are investing both time and money in reducing carbon emissions we are not there yet – and neither is the technology needed to deliver Net Zero coach travel. But the planet is in crisis today and we have to act now to try and avoid making the situation even worse. We cannot wait.

Whilst carbon offsetting is certainly not the long-term solution to the climate emergency it is, in our opinion, the best and only way for us to deliver on our commitment to help you continue to enjoy fabulous holiday experiences today without further damaging the sights and destinations that we all love to visit for those that come after us.

To do this, we have invested in a tool that allows us to accurately calculate all of the carbon emissions associated with our holidays. We are also the first coach tour operator in the country to be entirely paperless and we certainly haven’t invested in fancy offices or other things that we don’t think we really need to deliver great holidays. We actively look to work with suppliers that share our commitment to sustainability and offer support to all our suppliers on their own journey to reduce emissions.

All of this means that our entire business is certified as Carbon Neutral by Carbon Footprint Ltd who undertake annual audits to make sure that we have our calculations right and verify that we truly have removed from the atmosphere all of the carbon associated with every aspect of our operations.

Our Sustainability Projects

One of the best bits of being carbon neutral is that we get to choose the specific projects we wish to support through our offset programme. Over time, these projects will increasingly be chosen by Toureasy’s customers too.

Toureasy only invests in high quality, verified, carbon offset projects that are recognised by Carbon Footprint Ltd. They all meet the stringent requirements of the Quality Assurance Standard (QAS) for Carbon Offsetting and also use one or more of the following credit systems to evidence their positive impact on the environment:

– Certified Emission Reductions (CER) credits
– Gold Standard CER credits
– Gold Standard Verified Emission Reductions (VER) credits
– Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) certified credits

These are some of the projects that we invested in this year:

INVESTED: UK Tree Planting

This project provided us with an opportunity to plant trees in the UK. For each tCO2e offset, one tree is planted in the UK. We are planting in the West Midlands and South West.

INVESTED: Protecting the Amazon

We are also helping to protect the Amazon Rainforest – the largest remaining rainforest in the world. The Amazon is known for its amazing biodiversity; containing 10% of all species, including many endangered species. Our offsets are being used in the Amazon through the Brazilian Amazon Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) project to guarantee emission reductions are delivered that will protect this unique part of the world.

INVESTED: Kenya Tree Planting

This project provides an opportunity to plant trees in Kenya. For each tCO2 being offset, one native tree is planted in the Great Rift Valley, Kenya. Over the last ten years, the project in Kenya has planted over 170,000 trees and rehabilitated over 160 hectares of the forest helping in restoring the water catchment ecosystem function of the forest. While doing this, over 20 community members who directly work in the forest make their livelihoods from the project. Many more from their families benefit from being dependent on them. The project includes an empowerment scheme, where the members are now owners of dairy cows from which they get additional income from the sale of milk to their villagers. The project is strongly focused on empowering women, who make up over 50% of the project team.

INVESTED: Gunung Salak Geothermal Energy Project

Geothermal power plants use steam produced from reservoirs of hot water found a couple of miles or more below the Earth's surface, instead of having to use fossil fuels. The steam rotates a turbine that activates a generator, which produces electricity. It is a natural and sustainable source of energy. There are over 150 active volcanoes in Indonesia, giving the nation a huge potential for geothermal energy production. Located within the Halimun-Salak National Park, the Gunung Salak project harnesses heat from deep within the Earth to generate clean geothermal power. The project involves an capacity upgrade of three turbines at an existing geothermal power plant from 55MW to 60 MW. This additional 15 MW allows the plant to generate more energy from the same source of thermal steam. The project creates social benefits in addition to the emissions reductions. The projects supports regional educational programmes and activities such as book donations at local schools. The project also improves employment opportunities in the area.

INVESTED: Freedom Flight Prize

In addition to these projects, we are also supporting Carbon Footprint’s Freedom Flight Prize The Freedom Flight Prize will be awarded for the first zero carbon emission plane capable of carrying 100+ passengers across the Atlantic. The aim is to generate a multi-million pound prize fund to motivate and accelerate the development of truly sustainable aviation.

We Declare A Climate Emergency

The climate emergency doesn’t recognise borders and whilst holidays and short breaks by coach are the most sustainable way to travel, we recognise our responsibility to do so much more. That is why we have signed up to Tourism Declares, an initiative that supports tourism businesses, organisations and individuals across the world that are committed to taking action to combat climate change. By signing up to Tourism Declares, Toureasy is not only lending its’ voice to others in declaring a climate emergency, but we are committed to taking purposeful action to reduce our carbon emissions over time and in line with the advice from The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to cut global carbon emissions to 55% below 2017 levels by 2030.

Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism

The Glasgow Declaration is a catalyst for increased urgency about the need to accelerate climate action in tourism and to secure strong commitments to support the global goals to halve emissions over the next decade and reach Net Zero emissions as soon as possible before 2050.

Over 450 organizations, including Toureasy, have become signatories of the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism to accelerate climate action.

By becoming signatories, organisations agree to implement the commitments detailed in the Glasgow Declaration, notably:
– Support the global commitment to halve emissions by 2030 and reach Net Zero as soon as possible before 2050.
– Deliver climate action plans within 12 months from becoming a signatory (or updating existing plans), and implement them.
– Align plans with the five pathways of the Declaration (Measure, Decarbonise, Regenerate, Collaborate, Finance) to accelerate and co-ordinate climate action in tourism.
– Report publicly on an annual basis on progress against interim and long-term targets, as well as on actions being taken.
– Work in a collaborative spirit, sharing good practices and solutions, and disseminating information to encourage additional organizations to become signatories and supporting one another to reach targets as quickly as possible.

Everyone in the tourism sector has a role to play in accelerating climate action and therefore all tourism stakeholders (legal entities) can become signatories of the Glasgow Declaration. Toureasy is proud to have been one of the first!

Please click here for further information.

Our 3 Point Plan

We have developed a ‘Climate Action Plan’, which sets out in more detail our intentions to reduce carbon emissions over the next decade. We will share an initial public declaration of our ‘Climate Emergency Plan’, and update on progress each year.

Accept current IPCC advice stating the need to cut global carbon emissions to 55% below 2017 levels by 2030 in order to keep the planet within 1.5 degrees of warming. We’ll ensure our ‘Climate Emergency Plan’ represents actions designed to achieve this as a minimum, through delivering transparent, measurable and increasing reductions in the total carbon emissions per customer arising from our operations and the short breaks and holidays sold by us.

Advocate for change. We recognise the need for system change across the industry to accelerate a fair and realistic transition towards carbon-free tourism. Leisuretime by Toureasy aims to play a leading role in driving change across the coach tourism sector, in particular. We will encourage our suppliers and partners to make the same declaration; sharing best practice amongst peers; and actively participate in the Tourism Declares community.

The Most Sustainable Choice

Unless you can holiday exclusively on foot or by bike, there is no more sustainable way to get away than on a comfortable, modern coach because of the number of people they can carry and their increasingly clean and efficient engines.

The simple truth is that the more people choose to travel by coach, the better it is for our planet. It would only take a 15% increase in coach travel across the UK to reduce carbon emissions by over a quarter of a million tonnes*. Now that’s a lot less carbon in the atmosphere.

Just one coach can keep up to 50 cars off the road.

So, the more people who choose to travel by coach on a short break or holiday rather than travel any other way, the happier our planet will be. And because Toureasy is the only UK coach tour operator to fully offset its carbon emissions, it goes without saying that both we and the planet will be even happier if you choose to travel with us!

Whilst the coach industry continues to invest in research and technology that will ultimately deliver coaches powered by electricity or even hydrogen, these vehicles are not available to us today. The coaches we use for our tours are some of the cleanest available, but they still use diesel fuel because there is currently no alternative. That is why we deliver our carbon neutral commitment through high quality, responsible, carbon offsets.