Our Impact
At Down Under Tours and The Travel Corporation, we understand that travel matters. The opportunity to travel and enjoy the beauty of our natural world is gift, with which comes the responsibility to protect it. As a tourism organisation, we play an integral role in the development of sustainable tourism and take this responsibility seriously. At Down Under Tours, we are committed to sustainability in every day of our operations; from our partnership with The Treadright Foundation, to our ECOcertifications, fleet management, and everyday activities to reduce our environmental footprint.
MAKE TRAVEL MATTER®.CHECKLIST
There are many things we can do while travelling to ensure we have a positive impact on people, the planet and its wildlife. Travelling sustainably can be simple and to help our guests, The TreadRight Foundation has developed this easy-to-use checklist. From choosing your travel company carefully before you go to packing reusable water bottles and ensuring you shop and eat as locally as possible, you’ll be taking small steps towards making travel matter on your next holiday around Australia or New Zealand.
The Treadright Foundation
Created as a joint initiative between The Travel Corporation’s (TTC) family of brands, The Treadright Foundation is a not-for-profit working to ensure the environments and communities we visit remain vibrant for generations to come. By providing grants to organisations that encourage sustainability in different locations, we hope to maintain the natural attractions and unique heritages across the world that define each region.
To date, Treadright has helped support some 50-plus sustainable tourism projects worldwide. Within Cairns, Down Under Tours and The Treadright Foundation are foundation members of Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef; an organisation whose mission is to engage a worldwide community to support positive action for the future of the reef and the planet. Please visit the Treadright Foundation website to see the many amazing global projects that we have been supporting.
Carbon Offsetting
As part of our continuing sustainability journey, we feel it’s increasingly important to provide our guests and our team with the necessary tools and information to allow them to make responsible travel choices whenever possible. With this in mind, we are now happy to provide you with opportunities to carbon offset your travel experience.
If you’re looking to offset your carbon footprint for an upcoming or previous travel experience, our not-for-profit TreadRight Foundation has identified four leading carbon offset programs – Conservation International Carbon Fund, myclimate, The Nature Conservancy, and Rainforest Concern – Forest Credits – that provide travellers with a number of ways in which to offset your travel experiences and a variety of carbon offset projects to choose from.
Eco-Certification
The ECO Certification Program has been developed by industry for industry, addressing the need to identify genuine ecotourism and nature tourism operators in Australia. The program is a world first and is now being exported to the rest of the world as the International ECOtourism Standard. Down Under Tours has achieved Advanced ECOtourism and Green Travel Leader status for those companies who have maintained accreditation for 10+ years. This demonstrates our consistent commitment to delivering sustainable tourism experiences which foster environmental and cultural understanding, appreciation and conservation.
Under the ECO Certification Program, Ecotourism is defined as:
Ecologically sustainable tourism with a primary focus on experiencing natural areas that fosters environmental and cultural understanding, appreciation and conservation.
ECOtourism Certification provides industry, protected area managers, local communities and travellers with an assurance that a certified product is backed by a commitment to best practice ecological sustainability, natural area management and the provision of quality ecotourism experiences.
In 2019, Down Under Tours was inducted into EcoTourism Australia’s Hall of Fame for being eco-certified for 20 years. We are very proud to have achieved this milestone which is a testament to our long-term commitment to sustainability.
Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef
Within Cairns, Down Under Tours and The Treadright Foundation are foundation members of Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef: a global movement, powered by you. Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef’s missions is to engage a worldwide community to support positive action for the future of the Reef and the planet. Every action- big or small- makes a positive impact and contributes to the combined impact of many around the world that are united for the Reef. Visit their website to become a citizen today and find out what you can do to make an impact.
Our Commitment
The Down Under Tours Group takes its environmental impact on the planet seriously and rises to the challenge by committing to energy management, waste management and contribution to conservation through all levels of the Company.
So, what are we doing?
- Of all forms of transport, coach travel has been proven to reduce congestion and create the least amount of pollution per passenger kilometre compared to car, air and rail travel. At Down Under Tours, our fleet of coaches are manufactured at minimum industry emissions standards of Euro3 & Euro4. Our vehicles used for the Cape Tribulation tour in the Daintree National Park have the latest Euro5 emission controls.
- All vehicles are equipped with advanced GPS Tracking. This allows our operations team to track our vehicles in real-time & provides accurate data to track and measure each vehicles fuel consumption, distance travelled on each job, benchmark calibrations for comfort and fuel efficiency. This data allows us to manage the use of our vehicles in a number of ways and reducing fuel consumption and emission levels. Since the implementation of GPS Tracking, we have seen a significant reduction in fuel usage per year.
- All coaches require the use of refrigerant gas to run air conditioning systems and we use Refrigerant 134A due to its low ozone depletion count.
- Reduced paper usage in our office through the implementation of paper reuse, our No Print Policy, and the use of an electronic filing system. All printed material included unused brochures are recycled, and 41% of our brochures are printed with eco-friendly UV inks.
- We implement a ‘clean wash bay approach’ for all vehicles at our depot through the onsite treatment of waste water in a Coalescing Plate Separator.
- Our team is committed to the removal of traveller litter and rubbish in areas used for tours.
- Our office is a single-use plastic free environment.
- Our fleet and onsite equipment undergo regular maintenance and servicing in order to decrease emissions and maintain reliability and longevity of equipment.
- At our office, all unnecessary lighting and electronics are switched off when not in use.
