Discover how to enjoy carbon neutral travel with us...
Eat Northern Spain has committed to carbon offsetting all trips booked directly with us, from 1 January 2022, including flights (no matter in the world where you fly from), land transport, accommodation and food.
What are we doing?
In a world where climate change is increasingly on the agenda and global emissions continue to grow, here at Eat Northern Spain, we have decided to act responsibly. We’re carbon offsetting all trips booked with us from 1 January 2022. Carbon offsetting is an internationally recognized way to take responsibility for unavoidable carbon emissions.
What is carbon offsetting?
In simple terms, offsetting one tonne of carbon means there will be one less tonne of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there would otherwise have been. To offset your emissions you must purchase the equivalent volume of carbon credits (independently verified emissions reductions) to compensate for them. The payments you make to purchase these carbon credits (carbon finance) is what makes the emissions reductions projects which created them, financially viable and sustainable. These projects can then continue to reduce global carbon emissions by improving technologies, changing awareness and behaviours in a community. Every carbon credit we buy represents one tonne of emissions reductions that has been delivered by a project, and is independently audited to internationally agreed standards. They are all certified by third parties and go through a rigorous system of checks and balances to prove they are real, measurable, permanent, additional, independently verified and unique.
Eat Northern Spain will purchase all the carbon credits associated with all the trips we organize from 1 January 2022 including flights from anywhere in the world so your environmental footprint during our trip with us will be zero. We will also allow an additional 10% buffer - so in fact you will be carbon positive during your trips with us.
We partner with the Gold Standard Foundation, a company setting the standard for climate and development interventions to quantify, certify and maximize their impact - creating value for people around the world and the planet we share.
Why?
There is a climate emergency. We know that tourism is responsible for 8% of the world’s carbon footprint, and that 'sustainability' means we must protect the planet for future generations. Our new offsetting programme is just part of our ongoing work to reduce the carbon output of our trips and reduce our footprint as a business.
While we acknowledge that carbon offsetting should not be a 'band aid solution' for all overseas travelling, we believe that by working with the right partner offsetting provides that short-to-medium-term solution as the industry moves towards net zero territory. Offsetting can open discussions, build cooperation and most crucially support local communities around the world.
Picos de Europa National Park
How?
A lot of companies - including travel companies - claim to carbon offset, or even to be carbon neutral or carbon positive, but it can be a vague claim. It's important to us that our claim to be carbon neutral is as transparent and as robust as we can make it.
Eat Northern Spain is proud to be working with Gold Standard, the blueprint for best practice in climate finance. We did not cut any corners when choosing our climate partners, and neither will we when analysing our carbon output. The climate experts at Gold Standard deliver some of the largest and most successful carbon offset programmes in the world. Their expert team has helped us to select a portfolio of projects that not only deliver robust carbon reductions, but which deliver positive impacts for local communities too.
Carbon reductions from all the projects we support worldwide have been independently verified by the Gold Standard, so we can be sure that the carbon reductions are real and verifiable. It was established by the WWF, and other international NGOs, in 2003 to ensure that carbon reduction projects adhere to the highest levels of environmental integrity.
After you finish your trip and you return back home, we will calculate the exact carbon footprint of your whole trip with real data (no rough estimates):
Who is covering the cost?
Eat Northern Spain will offer this service at not extra cost starting 1 Janurary 2022 because it is the right thing to do.