Travellers have a new option with WayAway: reducing the damage of their carbon footprint.
Clean up the sky after your vacation: reduce your carbon footprint with WayAway
You’ve all heard that сlimate change is our new reality. It influences not just nature but people’s everyday life – just check the recent hotter-than-ever air temperature levels or the weather disaster news on a TV near you.
Travelling without impacting planets’ ecosystems doesn’t exist; that’s an unavoidable fact. According to Sustainable Travel International, travelling contributes around 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with nearly half (49%) of the industry’s footprint coming from transport alone. In 2020 aviation’s share of climate change impact was around 3.5% (including CO² emission and non-CO² influence) of all human activity, according to Our World in Data statistics.
How can any conscious-minded vacationer compensate for this? Here’s one new solution: WayAway has launched ‘A Green Way To Travel’ initiative to help reduce the carbon footprint damage of flying by purchasing carbon credits.
Behind the idea
The new travel app WayAway launched in the summer of 2022. It offers intelligent air ticket searches, accommodation booking and car rental services. But the biggest USP of WayAway is multiple cashback offers from any of your trip purchases. This option is available for all WayAway Plus subscribers, and the cashback can be used for anything; you can even withdraw it via PayPal.
On the 29th of August, WayAway announced a new feature to help reduce carbon footprint damage inflicted on the planet by tourism. The initiative is provided in partnership with Sustainable Travel International, which has been assisting in offsetting carbon pollution for over 15 years.
What does ‘carbon credit’ mean?
Every traveller leaves behind a carbon footprint. Purchasing carbon credits is an easy option to compensate for the harm caused by CO² emissions. These units represent an amount offset or absorbed CO² (1 credit = 1 ton of CO²).
Carbon credits are a fast, environmentally friendly and systematic way to help the environment. And, of course, the advantage is that you don’t need to deny yourself travelling pleasure while assisting in reducing carbon footprint damage.
How travellers can personally help
One of Sustainable Travel International’s carbon offset projects is the Envira Amazonia Project in the Brazilian state of Acre. It aims to protect tropical forests from lumber harvesting and cattle ranching.
WayAway has become a partner of this project, which takes care of 500,000 acres of rainforests. All cashback donations gathered via the WayAway app will be doubled to help to stop deforestation and provide modern agricultural trainings to locals.
“Over the past year, Sustainable Travel International supported businesses and individuals in measuring and offsetting over 20,000 metric tons of emissions from tours, corporate travel, events, flights, and other activities. Our carbon offset program supported projects conserving vital forest ecosystems, such as the Amazon rainforest, and generating renewable energy. In addition to carbon measurement and offsetting, we also educated tourism professionals and travellers on climate-friendly and sustainable practices.”
Ivory Vogt – Program Manager, Climate & Resilience, Sustainable Travel International
How it works in WayAway app
- The traveller is heading for vacation and using airlines for his one-way or round trip. Depending on distance, an airplane produces a certain amount of CO². This can be measured by the Sustainable Travel International calculator.
- Afterwards, the traveller uses the WayAway Plus app to get cashback from every purchase.
- Users donate the saved cashback to ‘A Green Way To Travel’ directly from their WayAway Plus profile. It can be for the total recommended amount or a part of it – but regardless of the amount, the donation will be doubled.
- Your contribution will support the Envira Amazon carbon offset project. With such assistance, you are helping to save some parts of the rainforests, specifically – by rescuing trees from logging and planting new ones. Also, the project empowers local communities, providing them with sustainable alternatives for making a living instead of causing pressure on the forest.
This complex of activities helps both in creating new green areas, which will absorb the carbon footprint of your future trips and in the improvement of locals living conditions.
How it works in real life
Imagine you are finally heading on a weekend trip from your home in NYC to Paris and returning with bags full of cheese and wine.
A 1st class economy round trip NY-Paris-NY for one passenger has taken almost 7,500 miles and emitted 0.66 tons of CO² (based on the ICAO calculator).
Let’s check your spending: air tickets, Ibis Paris Porte de Bercy hotel room with breakfasts and renting a car to visit Versaille. You use a saved cashback amount to help in reducing the carbon footprint damage. A $15 donation becomes $30 with a WayAway magic trick, and this amount approximately equals 0.77 tons of subsequently absorbed CO².
This donation helps save the Amazon forests, commonly called ‘The Lungs Of The Planet’ and one of Latin America’s most vast and diverse ecosystems.
“ Traveling damages the planet, and the problem needs to be solved if we want to keep going for vacations. So we at WayAway have established a partnership with Sustainable Travel International to give our users a simple option for offsetting the damage. I believe this step will encourage WayAwayers to support nature and eventually bring journeys into harmony with the world. You’ve just supported forestry, helped tackle waste/pollution and empowered local communities. That’s amazing!”
Ivan Baidin, CEO of WayAway.
