TravelBeginsAt40.com becomes a Climeworks pioneer to capture its CO2 emissions and become climate neutral

Inspirational travel website, TravelBeginsAt40.com, has signed up to be a Climeworks ‘Discoverer Pioneer’ and have an amount of its CO₂ emissions captured from the atmosphere every month to ensure the website is climate neutral.

TravelBeginsAt40.com was founded by travel journalist Mark Bibby Jackson and, through a combination of articles and reviews, aims to help those aged 40+ find the best destinations and experiences on offer.

However, wonderful as travel is, it does come with a carbon load, which is why the website has chosen to work with Climeworks to have some of its carbon dioxide permanently removed from the atmosphere every month.

Climeworks has developed a process called direct air capture which filters historic CO₂ out of the atmosphere and then stores it underground where it is turned to stone thanks to a natural reaction with the surrounding basaltic rock

“Travelling helps us relax, meet different people, learn about cultures unlike our own, try new experiences and foods, and it makes a huge contribution to the economy of many, many countries. So, on the one hand, it’s important we continue to travel, but on the other, travelling does pump a large amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – and we need to reduce this dramatically if we are to have any chance of slowing climate change. Doing as much as we can to reduce our emissions while travelling, and then using technology like Climeworks’ direct air capture, to help suck up the unavoidable emissions is something we all need to consider. Which is why we want to inspire our readers and all travel fans to do what they can to reduce their carbon footprint.” said founder Mark Bibby Jackson.

“We’ll be using Climeworks to capture our general website emissions initially and then the non-flight parts of the editorial team’s travel. We’ll use Trees4Travel for specific flights. We hope that by combining the two we can have the biggest impact.”

Despite a huge decline in the last year thanks to the pandemic, the total contribution of travel and tourism to the global GDP in 2020 was approximately 4,671 billion U.S. dollars. (Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/233223/travel-and-tourism–total-economic-contribution-worldwide/ )

In 2019, globally 10% of jobs and GDP were in travel and tourism. Caribbean islands, for example, rely heavily on tourism for employment. More than 90% of jobs in Antigua and Barbuda in 2019 were in the sector. In 2019 one in 10 people worked in travel and tourism-related jobs, contributing $8.9 trillion, or around 10.3%, to the global economy. In the five years to 2019, the sector was responsible for one in four of all net new jobs created globally. (Source: https://wttc.org/Research/Economic-Impact )

Climeworks offers an accessible subscription service that enables individuals and companies to sign-up to have an amount of carbon dioxide removed from the air on their behalf each month. See: https://climeworks.com/subscriptions