Green Seas: Sustainable Cruising into the Next (Re) Generation

“Sustainability” is the tourism industry’s buzzword these days and appropriately so. According to NASA, 2018 was the fourth warmest year since 1880, and with the cruise industry’s reputation for carrying an unignorably large carbon footprint, something needed to change. Luckily, Intrepid Travel started making those changes nine years ago.

Intrepid Travel on Going Green

The off-the-beaten-path adventure tour operator has been a carbon-neutral business since 2010, one of several noble achievements that earned Intrepid Travel its coveted B Corp status (the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance) in 2018. One of their products, Adventure Cruising, boasts several sustainable precautions like banning single-use plastic and ensuring that at least 90 percent of the onboard food is locally sourced. But now, the 30-year-old travel company has a new mission: to become the largest global tour operator to be carbon positive by 2020, meaning that travelers will be positively impacting the environment by traveling on Intrepid’s Adventure Cruising ships.

RELATED: Green Seas: MS Roald Amundsen, The Future is Fish

Through their non-for-profit branch, The Intrepid Foundation, the company has committed to supporting the regeneration of kelp forests to reverse global warming. This project, in collaboration with The Climate Foundation and the University of Tasmania, will set up Australia’s first seaweed platform that will serve as a home to developing kelp forests. Not only will these forests grow, attract, and feed fish populations, but also cool surface ocean waters and sink carbon dioxide to the deep ocean.

To support this seaweed solution, The Intrepid Foundation aims to raise almost a quarter of a million U.S. dollars by the end of 2019 with every donation matched dollar to dollar.

For more information on Intrepid Travel’s Adventure Cruising and ways to support the kelp-forest initiative, visit intrepidtravel.com.

^{Photo: Intrepid Travel}