Nature Discovery – Becoming Carbon Elite

The team at Nature Discovery are no strangers to the concept of protecting Tanzania’s natural beauty and promoting sustainable development. They are core company values built into their daily operations.

The company is a Tanzanian based adventure outfitter with over 25 years’ experience of providing travelers with a true wilderness experience while meeting the highest standards of service and safety.

Since 2011 they have been offsetting the carbon emissions generated from their Kilimanjaro climbs with Carbon Tanzania. This action qualified them for ‘Carbon Smart’ status; a status that recognizes that a company has reviewed it’s business emissions and is taking steps to mitigate some of their impact.  However, they were only looking at part of their company operations and wanted to take the next step to become Carbon Elite.

Carbon Elite

Carbon Tanzania encourages everyone to become Carbon Elite by following the principle of “Measure – Reduce – Offset”.  The first step is to measure the carbon emissions across your entire operations. You then look at ways to reduce these emissions before offsetting the remaining unavoidable emissions. A Carbon Elite Company has undertaken the following:

• Addressed the full impact of the company’s emissions across all aspects of operations
• Committed to measure, reduce and offset these emissions
• Committed to reducing or replacing all sources of carbon dioxide emissions where possible
• Proven the actions taken are having the desired impact
• Proactively informing and encouraging clients and partners to engage in carbon offsetting

Challenges

Nature Discovery consists of a relatively small team and does not have a sustainability department. In order to reach their goal of becoming Carbon Elite they needed assistance with gaining an understanding of and then implementing the ‘Measure-Reduce-Offset’ principle.

Solution

The General Manager at Nature Discovery, Thomas Holden, reached out to Carbon Tanzania to see how we could help Nature Discovery become Carbon Elite. Carbon Tanzania met with Thomas to discuss which areas of their operations needed assessing and how to go about measuring, reducing and offsetting these currently unaddressed emissions.

Nature Discovery already had a number of procedures in place to reduce their emissions but needed assistance in measuring the company’s overall emissions.  Carbon Tanzania Director Jo Anderson worked through where the emissions were occurring and assisted with calculating the amount of carbon dioxide generated from various activities and the number of offsets they would need to purchase to offset these emissions.

Nature Discovery now have a thorough understanding of how their business activities generate emissions and the impact they have on the environment. They have procedures in place to reduce the emissions where possible and are offsetting their remaining, unavoidable emissions.  They also have a program in place to inform their safari clients of the carbon emissions generated through a safari and encourage each individual to offset their own contribution. 2017 marks Nature Discovery’s deepening commitment to conserving both the local and global environment, which co-insides with the UN’s International Year of Sustainable Tourism.