We’ve joined Tourism Declares. But why…?
Firstly, what is Tourism Declares? “Tourism Declares exists to enable everyone in tourism to implement the Climate Action Plans needed to halve sector emissions by 2030.”
That’s a description taken straight from the TD website which sums things up pretty nicely. The bigger questions you might have are, “Ok. So you’ve joined. Great. Why does that mean anything to me and my business?”. Or, “All well and good for you but how on earth can we meet these targets as a travel company that relies on flights and massive supply chains and hundreds of employees and so on…”. Both very valid thoughts and definitely a couple of examples of the many, many considerations we’ve had ourselves when making the decision to join up.
So why did we join?
The simple answer is that it’s really important that all businesses involved in travel and tourism take steps now that put the wheels in motion to help tourism become the force for good we know it can be. Nobody wants a future where we feel guilty about visiting the other amazing countries and cultures of our beautiful world. We want a tourism industry that benefits people, planet and prosperity. Fairly. For all, all the time. A big task yes, but with some collective thinking and effort, it’s not an impossible one.
We’ve talked quite a lot about the sustainability journey that we’re on as a business here at Atkin Jones and Sanderson Phillips and we hope that by talking about the steps we’re taking and sharing what we’re learning as we go along, it will encourage others looking to make changes too.
Our TD declaration is the latest step in our endeavours to continually improve our efforts in this area. We’ve considered where to invest our time carefully, beginning by working towards an environmental accreditation with Investors in the Environment. We’ve aligned our business objectives of six of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and have also signed up to the Good Business Charter. We’re planning even more later this year and moving into 2023 with 1, 3, 5 and 7 year plans to take us up to 2030.
What can you do?
If you want to find out more you could visit the list of other members of the Tourism Declares community to see some of the changes that people have started to make. Then take some time and consider what changes you can make – it will help you to realise that there are steps you can take now. Little steps maybe, but steps nonetheless.
Get in touch. We’d be more than happy to have a chat about the things we’ve done so far like calculating our carbon footprint, supporting Ecologi and The Charitable Travel Fund and networking with other like-minded businesses through our membership of UK for Good.
Sign up – if you think that you’re ready to join Tourism Declares then go for it! It means you’re committing to developing a Climate Emergency Plan within the next 12 months, which might sound like a lot but the good news is that there are loads of lovely, friendly people out there just waiting to provide advice and guidance to help you achieve this. Including us 🙂