Carbon Labels & regenerative actions

With the COP 30 Summit in the news this month, it seems a good time to talk about and launch our carbon labels on trips and also explain what regenerative actions we are taking and why. At RAW Travel, we believe walking is one of the most rewarding and responsible ways to explore the world. Slowing down, travelling on foot, supporting small local businesses – these choices already reduce your footprint compared with conventional tourism.

But there’s still some impact in every journey, and carbon labelling is our way of being open about that, and empowering people with information about our trips. This certainly isn’t about guilt or attaining perfection. Think of it like nutrition information on food: we’re not telling you what to choose, we’re simply giving you the facts so you can make decisions that align with your values.

What does it mean in practice?

Carbon labelling isn’t about discouraging people from travel – it’s about options and awareness and us taking positive action for every trip we sell. So we are in the process of rolling these labels out across all our trip range, they will sit discreetly under each itinerary and can be expanded, for those who are interested, to go into more detail. Explaining what we do with these calculations, after we estimate the amount of carbon produced (in kg/ tons for each day/trip) we pay for a monthly offset to cover the estimated emissions of our walkers for all trips taken with RAW Travel and our own operations, which goes into local reforestation or biodiversity restoration. (Explore the practical actions behind these estimated carbon offsets for your trip here.)

We are aiming to further decarbonise/ reduce our own operations and also following a philosophy of ‘re-wilding the planet‘, as championed by David Attenborough, as the most tangible, practical action we can take for now, with native Australian tree planting and ocean plastic clean-ups. Let’s be honest, some carbon offsetting schemes have had dubious outcomes in recent years and people have been rightfully sceptical, but these are proven ones that we feel we can stand behind and have integrity.

So the idea with these labels is we want you to see the full picture clearly and with a simple, transparent footprint for each trip, you can understand:

• what has the biggest influence on emissions on our trips (accommodation, meals and transport)
• what regenerative  actions are we taking to offset these amounts
• how walking holidays already compare favourably to other travel styles.

This turns vague ideas about sustainability into straightforward, easy-to-understand facts. By carbon labelling our trips, we will be sending a clear signal to our local accommodation providers, transport operators, food and service suppliers that sustainability matters in this industry. This hopefully encourages better practices throughout the entire trail economy – benefiting the landscapes and communities we all care about. In other words, your walking holiday becomes part of a bigger positive story.