Our Pillars For Sustainable Travel
Environmental
Generally, when people think of “sustainability,” their minds tend to go toward impacts on the environment. And while it isn’t the whole picture, it certainly is a big piece. Proethical measures environmental sustainability through impacts on climate, pollution levels, natural resources, energy usage, water usage, the amount of investment into renewables, and efforts to improve or reduce emissions.
We only work with suppliers who are taking active measures to understand and reduce the impact to the world around them. On approach, we thoroughly vet new suppliers via a rigorous checklist of environmental priorities. This list will be updated every six months according to best practices and to ensure that our partners continue to maintain policies that align with our mission.
Social
The social aspect of sustainability concerns metrics around access to resources, poverty rates, education levels, food security, and social freedoms as they pertain to local populations.
In efforts to support local populations and help them grow, Proethical is committed to creating and sponsoring workshops to help guide small entrepreneurs in the countries we visit to market themselves more effectively and monetize their skills
Economic
This speaks to the dependency of the local economy on the tourism industry, national debt as a percentage of GDP, and mobile internet infrastructure. We want to promote areas that are more dependent on tourism and work hard to ensure that the maximum amount spent is channeled toward the locals who need it to survive (as opposed to international conglomerates). We also do this keeping an eye on the inherent risks it assumes, which are explained in the section below.
Contextual Awareness
Proethical’s metrics of contextual awareness include keeping an eye on overall traveler safety, local civil unrest, healthcare infrastructure and quality of care, the number of endangered species and poaching abatement, as well as over tourism and heritage site deterioration.
We are constantly monitoring these data points in the countries where we conduct our immersions, and every two months, conduct audits to ensure that we are not putting our travelers, local populations, or the environment at risk. If we deem that a destination does not meet our standards, we will advise holding an immersion there and work hard to create a alternate itinerary in a comparable location.
Did you know that
Currently Over
8%
of total global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by tourism*
THere will Be A
25%
increase in emissions due to tourism by 2030 without a change to the status quo*
Over
75%
of total tourism emissions reported are from scope 3 emissions*
Estimates say
3%
of global GDP in 2023 was attributed to a rebound
in tourism post Covid-19^
However only
30%
of tourism dollars spent on average is retained by the local economies¯
Sources:
*UN World Tourism Organization - Glasgow Declaration Implementation Report, 2023
^UN World Tourism Organization - World Tourism Barometer, January 2024
¯https://medium.com/@laura.rankin/a-data-driven-approach-to-combat-tourism-leakage-6c93c849c135
Emission Scopes Explained
Proethical Travel works to monitor and minimize emissions from all three scopes.
SCOPE 1:
Direct greenhouse (GHG) emissions that occur from sources that are controlled or owned by an organization (e.g., emissions associated with fuel combustion in boilers, furnaces, vehicles)
SCOPE 2:
Indirect GHG emissions associated with the purchase of electricity, steam, heat, or cooling. While scope 2 emissions occur at the facility where they are generated, they are accounted for in an organization’s emissions because they are a result of the organization’s energy use.
SCOPE 3:
The result of GHG emissions from assets not directly owned or controlled by the reporting organization, but that the organization indirectly affects in its value chain, through supplier or distribution networks.
Source: https://www.epa.gov/climateleadership
“How is it possible that the most intellectual creature to ever walk the planet earth is destroying its only home?”
— Jane Goodall