What
Last month, Impact Travel Alliance (ITA), a nonprofit focused on sustainable tourism, announced that it is teaming up with Tomorrow’s Air, the world’s first carbon removal collective for travel, to offer travelers a chance to minimize their environmental footprint and eliminate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via a subscription-based carbon storage program that begins at $10 a month. Travelers can sign up for the program at a virtual event called The Truth Behind Carbon Offsets, taking place April 1.
Why It Matters
At the peak of the global shutdown in early 2020, carbon emissions fell by 17% compared to a similar period in 2019, according to the World Meteorological Organization. That decrease was a silver lining to the convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis and, at the same time, a call to arms to intensify the removal of carbon from our atmosphere. Tomorrow’s Air — which was created with the help of the Adventure Travel Trade Association — and ITA are providing advisors with an easy option they can share with clients who are concerned about travel’s environmental consequences.
Fast Facts
- Tomorrow’s Air subscribers support carbon removal via direct air capture, whereby captured carbon dioxide is stored permanently underground.
- ITA will host an online event aimed at media called “Framing Climate Crisis Stories & Solutions in Travel” on Tuesday, March 16.
- The April 1 event will also serve as a launch point for ITA’s second community challenge of the year — removing carbon from the earth’s atmosphere by purchasing a Tomorrow’s Air subscription throughout April. The organizations will track how much carbon is removed from the Earth’s atmosphere based on how many travelers participate in ITA’s challenge, and ITA will share the amount with its community.
What They Are Saying
“Through this partnership, we can create and share carbon removal efforts as well as sustainable travel inspiration and education with travelers worldwide,” said Christina Beckmann, co-founder of Tomorrow’s Air. “ITA’s extensive network of conscious travelers is the perfect fit for our mission.”
“There isn’t a silver bullet for fixing the climate crisis, and that means we’re going to have to identify solutions from many different angles,” said Kelley Louise, founder and executive director of ITA. “As travelers, the first step is making sure our experiences are as eco-friendly as possible. From there, travelers can advocate for a greener industry in a multitude of different ways, including voting with our dollars by supporting eco-friendly brands, offsetting our carbon or permanently removing it from the atmosphere, etc. I like to think of these solutions as different pieces of a bigger puzzle — first and foremost, we need to minimize our carbon footprint, and then we need to get really proactive about both nature and tech-based solutions in order to save our earth.”
The Details
Impact Travel Alliance
www.impacttravelalliance.org
Tomorrow’s Air
www.tomorrowsair.com
