Responsible Travel
Carbon Balancing
CARBON BALANCING
The Adventure Company offsets all of our staff travel, both for commuting to work and overseas trips. We also make a £2 per passenger donation to partially offset the carbon costs associated with the ground travel involved in our trips. We think that offsetting carbon should be a choice to be made by the individual traveller therefore we ask clients if they would like to augment this £2 with a further contribution. Similarly we ask if you would like to offset your flights – we have set bandings given to us by Climate Care.
Blue Ventures Carbon Offset
We donate the £2 per person that the Adventure Company gives to Blue Ventures Carbon Offset. BVCO works in Madagascar to reduce carbon emissions with projects that benefit communities and the environment. Current programmes include distribution of both solar and energy-efficient stoves in subsistence communities in southern Madagascar. These stoves dramatically reduce wood use and associated deforestation, as well as the time and money expended by families in gathering fuel wood. What’s more, the stoves also cut carbon dioxide emissions by 1.5 - 2 tonnes per year compared to the inefficient and unsafe open fires that are commonly used in the region. All offsets are verified by Dr Philip Mann of the University of Oxford Environmental Change Institute, and BVCO adheres to requirements for Gold Standard accreditation.
Future projects are being developed around the world, including biogas units for sustainable energy production from organic waste in India; ram water pumps and biogas in Brazil; stove distribution in Madagascar and Brazil and mangrove research and restoration projects in
Madagascar.
Andavadoaka
The BVCO team in Madagascar has been working on the ground to promote, educate and distribute energy efficient stoves in Andavadoaka. BVCO will monitor fuel use before and after the stoves are distributed to track their effectiveness. Updates are sent back to BV’s UK headquarters every fortnight where it is analysed by their London staff. Currently 26 stoves have been sold to households with a large BVCO subsidy. They are being well received, with anecdotal evidence finding that the Yoyo stoves improve fuel use by over 4 times.
User comments on the Yoyo stove
"Only 150g of wood was needed to boil 1litre of water in 6 minutes, compared to 1000g in 10 minutes for the regular stove."
"I use about 200 Ariary of firewood to cook 5 meals for my family with the yoyo. And I also use small pieces of wood from my husband's carpenter work. Before I spent 400 Ariary per day. We are 5 persons in total and I cook cassava, fried fish and rice. "
User comments on the Solar Parabola Stove
"Before we used 6 sacks of charcoal per month. With the parabole, our charcoal consumption decreased to 2.5 - 3 sacks per month."
"It will be good if the parabole is available in the village because people can economize firewood and charcoal, and thus spend less money and also preserve the surrounding forests. Clearing up forests will make the area drier."
Climate Care
Your flight will be the largest environmental impact of your holiday. Did you know that on a return flight to Peru, you will be responsible for 2.5 tonnes of the global warming gas carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere? (that's just you, not the rest of the passengers on the plane!). Climate Care offers you the opportunity to offset these emissions by making a payment which they will invest in projects that reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, thereby balancing the impact of your flight and making it climate neutral. Climate Care projects include rainforest reforestation in Uganda, building energy efficient stoves in Bangladesh, giving low energy light bulbs to poorer households in South Africa and developing community-based micro-hydro electricity in Bulgaria.
You’ll be asked on booking if you want to donate - with set amounts from £6 it couldn’t be easier. The amounts are set according to the destination you're travelling to and based on accurate figures which help to best calculate how much you need to pay to make your flight climate neutral. But of course you can also choose to pay more or less than the amount we recommend, and can go a long way to repairing your holiday’s contribution to global warming.
The Adventure Company offset the carbon dioxide emissions from all staff travel, and we encourage you to do the same.
Efficient stoves in Honduras
In the capital, Tegucigalpa, nearly all the cooking is done on wood, which is brought in from the surrounding countryside – causing major deforestation
Our project is working in Honduras to make fuel efficient cooking stoves available in some of the poorest communities. This supports conservation by reducing the wood needed for cooking by around 50%. It also benefits the householders by removing smoke from the kitchen and dramatically cutting the health risk from wood smoke.
We are working through a local NGO to make the stoves available. Some women buy their stoves outright, whilst others have access to “soft” loans through the project. This means that as the monies are paid back, they can be used to fund even more stoves.
Renewable power for schools in India
Many schools in India cook their food on LPG gas, which is an expensive fossil fuel. Ramesh Nibhoria, an entrepreneur in Chandigarh in Punjab, has developed a new stove that runs on renewable energy.
The stoves burn briquettes, made of crop waste such as corn and rice stalk – which is normally burn in the fields.
The schools buy the stoves on “hire purchase” over 18 months – paying off the loan with the money they save on fuel. However, Ramesh is limited in the number he can build as he cannot get a loan from the bank. So we have given him the funds to increase his production to 50 stoves year over the next two years.
What’s more, the children prefer the taste of the food as the chapattis taste just like they do at home!
Lighting in South Africa
We have been working with a number of school groups in South Africa to install energy efficient lamps in households.
We were very pleased when the EcoClub in Ladysmith won the International Volvo Adventure Environmental Award. They beat off entrants from around the world to win the prize, which is given to groups who run environmental education projects in their communities.
