Climate neutral | How we compensated our travel in 2022

TRAVEL NEWS – December 22, 2022: Yes, we travel and fly a lot… But that doesn't mean we don't care about the environment. On the contrary ?! To compensate for our travel behavior we have (Wereldreizigers.nl) through our climate-neutral bunq bank, where we include our Prepaid Credit Card have that we use worldwide, 1108 trees ??? planted in Kenya and Madagascar. As a result, a large part of our business operations has become CO2 and climate neutral. However, that's not all.

In this news item we want to give you more insight into what we do behind the scenes for a better world…

Bunq bank plants 9 million trees

This year, together with the Bunq community, we have planted more than 4 million mangrove trees in both Kenya and Madagascar with partner Eden Reforestation Projects. That brings the total to no less than 9 million planted trees, or 115 million kg of CO2 compensation!

Wereldreizigers.nl financed a total of 1108 trees, from which we received a nice certificate at the beginning of 2023.

More than just Co2 compensation

With every tree we plant, we not only take a step closer to becoming CO2-free, we also help the local population who work on the plantations to drastically improve their quality of life.

At the Madagascar site alone, we have helped generate over 2000 days of full-time work per month. This gives the local population the opportunity to rebuild their local economy.

How we make a difference

But that's not all. Wereldreizigers.nl does even more for a better world. Below is a summary of some of our deliberate, climate-neutral choices over the past few years.

• When we started this website, we immediately decided to go CO2 neutral as much as possible, starting with choosing a Co2 neutral bank (bunq).
• Of every euro we have earned or spent since then, Bunq's collaboration with Eden Reforestation Projects, invested a small part in trees.
• We chose a Co2 neutral server to host the website, which runs entirely on green energy from the Netherlands.
• We bought through the action of Teamtrees.org another two times 100 trees to compensate for air travel.
• Our house, practically our office, is completely supplied with green energy.
• We work as much as possible on energy-efficient laptops and desktops.
• When we buy new 'travel gadgets', we look closely at the impact the product has on the environment. So we purposefully bought one Noise canceling headphones from Sony which is made entirely from 100% recycled car parts and we only bought backpacks made from 100% recycled plastic. These are the Peak Design 20L Daypack and the sustainable GOT BAG which is 100% made from plastic waste from the sea!
• Where possible, we promote as many ecological destinations and accommodations as possible on our website.
• Our 4×4 camper will be equipped with extra solar panels and batteries in 2021 so that we will never have to use the power cable for energy again. We even use this to heat our water for showering! We generate all the energy we use while traveling with the camper via the solar panels and store it in our batteries.

Also read: Responsible travel, how do you do that? | 7x sustainable tips

It can always be better

In 2023 we will investigate whether there are even more options to reduce our Co2 impact. For example, we want to fly less and travel more Europe going to travel by train.

We also drive a camper in which we fill up with fossil fuel. We still have a dream that we want to build a new (fully electric) camper ourselves. Unfortunately, given the prices of these very expensive vans, we cannot afford that at the moment, but we are closely monitoring the development.

In short, we are far from done with change. Will you change with us?

Also read: Tips for a plastic-free trip | 9x sustainable must-have luggage items

^{Photo credits: © Wereldreizigers.nl, Bunq and Eden Reforestation Projects}