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The awareness of the Germans for sustainable tourism increases continually.
Ecological traveling does not necessarily mean abdication. The tourism industry
follows suit to this trend. Two seals of quality now certify the eco
friendliness of a vacation trip. Tourists who want to travel independent from
the cachets can compensate their CO2-balance with a donation. Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) is currently also in the tourism industry omnipresent.
“Doing well by doing good.” This maxim of CSR-philosophy should be called in the
tourism industry “Pay more and travel in peace”.
Because those who have a guilty conscience before their flight to
the Bahamas can neutralize their personal CO2-balance with a donation to
“climate friendly” travel organizations. The vacationer can compensate his
ecological footprint by paying money. Companies like Atmosfair and Myclimate
pick up this idea and promote for climate friendly flying. The so called
ecological footprint was created in the middle of the 1990s to illustrate the
effects of human behavior to the environment by activities like consume and
production. The ecological footprint is a metaphor for our consumption of
resources. The CO2-emission of one person on a flight from Munich to St.
Arthur’s Town (Bahamas) and back equates to the climatic effect of about 5,980
kg CO2. For comparison: one person consumes on average 3,000 kg of CO2 per year.
Atmosfair calculates on the basis of an emission calculator how much climatic
gases the selected flight causes. For those who do not want to give up their
dream of traveling to the Bahamas, the calculator of Atmosfair ascertains for
the flight to the Caribbean island a donation (compensation) of Euro 139.--. All
donations will be invested in concrete projects for environmental protection or
social intentions which the donator can observe in the internet. WWF has
calculated the CO2-emission for seven typical destinations in its recent
publication “The Tourist Climate Footprint”:
The short trip to South Tyrol, holiday at Baltic Sea island
Rügen´s beach and the wellness holiday in Southern Germany are placed (as
expected with a small amount of emissions) on the ranks two to four. Travellers
who fly to Mexico or to other countries far-off expend on average their personal
CO2-budget of two years due to one oversea trip. To travellers who are
interested in sustainability the possibility to select their holiday
destinations by the criteria of environment protection is offered as an
alternative. In a society in which people retrospectively reflect the
consequences of their habits they recollect more and more to the beginning of
mass tourism and its ecological consequences. It is not a new kind of awareness
which many tourists point out nowadays but latterly the decisiveness of the
consumers to pay for their guilt in form of an indulgence like those ones in the
medieval. The tourism industry reacts to this will for penance in that way that
supplier campaign for their destinations with seals of quality.
 more in our
newsletters (in German)
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