With climate change affecting how tourists and travellers plan their holidays abroad, how can you think about sustainability when you’re planning to take your next trip? Speaking to former British runner, Paula Radcliffe and UN environment advocate, we’ll take a look at the changing attitudes towards travelling.
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00:00 According to new research from Explore Worldwide, the number one sustainable travel company
00:07 in the UK, sustainability is reportedly at the forefront of travellers' and tourists'
00:12 minds when they plan their next getaway. 58% of international holidaymakers across the
00:17 UK, US and Australia are thought to worry about the environmental impact of holidays,
00:22 with over half of us researching sustainable travel methods before jetting off in order
00:26 to mitigate the impact of our trips. And now, it being a race to protect the planet, former
00:30 British long-distance runner and UN Environment Advocate, Paula Radcliffe, told me a little
00:35 bit more about this topic. As an athlete and still an active runner now,
00:42 I spend a lot of time outdoors and I really appreciate the environment and how amazing
00:47 it is. I've had the opportunity to travel and visit some beautiful places and I want
00:51 to do what I can to make sure that that's available for my kids' generations and for
00:56 their kids' generations and for all the future generations as well. So that's why working
01:01 as an advocate for clean air is really important to me because I believe it's a basic human
01:06 right. Every body should have access to clean air to breathe and to exercise in. And they're
01:11 not trying to say, don't go on holiday because that's important for so many of our mental
01:15 health reasons, family reasons, just recharge reasons and culture-wise as well. What they
01:22 are saying is do what you can to reduce the carbon footprint of the travel to get there.
01:26 And then when you are there, work with the local community, use public transport or even
01:30 better walk, bike, run, kayak, find different ways to explore the local area and kind of
01:38 give back to the local community. So one in seven of us in the report actually saying,
01:42 yeah, when we spend money on holiday, we want it to be going into the local community and
01:47 making it more sustainable that way. So it's little things like travelling lighter, using
01:52 hand luggage where possible, because that has a huge impact on the carbon footprint
01:57 of the airline industry. With summer having a knock-on effect to the way we choose to
02:01 travel following busy crowds, travel disruption and soaring temperatures, the report showed
02:06 that 32% of us opt for more immersive experiences when it comes to travelling and that 46% of
02:12 us are willing to pay more for end-to-end service from travel firms. So how has climate
02:16 change and sustainability set the change the future of how we holiday?
02:21 I didn't realise, so there's a stat in the report that says that if everybody over a
02:26 year reduced their luggage by just 0.45 of a kilogram, so less than half a kilogram,
02:33 that's actually, sorry, that's the whole plane load, then that would save 53,000 litres
02:38 of fuel per year. So if you think about, if I said first, if everybody on the plane just
02:43 reduced it by half a kilo or one kilo, that would have a much bigger impact. So those
02:48 kind of things I didn't realise. I knew that it was better to travel hand luggage and lighter,
02:53 but I didn't realise it had such a big impact on the carbon footprint.