A PASSION FOR SUSTAINABLE TOURISM and a penchant for giving back.

Travel has always been an important aspect of my life. With a hereditary passion for exploring the world developed at a very young age, it was inevitable that my career would later revolve around travel too. It is now clearer than ever that travel providers and travelers must take responsibility and acknowledge the role that each of us plays in helping to make travel matter. And, with the recent release of our sustainability strategy, How We Tread Right (HWTR), I just knew that I wanted to help our organization truly make a difference. But where and how to start?

Our strategy consists of 11 measurable goals which we are committed to achieving by 2025. But how do we know whether or not we are making progress if we don't have a full understanding of our current footprint? What has become blatantly clear for us is that to make progress, we need to ensure that we can measure, and understand our impact. Once we can measure, only then we can manage!

One such area which we have already started to tackle is in our fight against food waste, which is responsible for 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions. We have partnered with food waste warriors, Leanpath, firstly intending to measure our current level of food waste onboard one of our ships, to then take appropriate actions based on a thorough analysis of these measurements. This is the first step in achieving Goal #3, reducing our food waste by 50% by 2025.

Another aspect that has been perfectly emphasized over these last months is that being a responsible and sustainable organization requires “all hands on deck,” and that collaboration is the absolute key to the achievement of our strategy. In these last few months, myself and a collection of colleagues, all from different areas of our operation and with different expertise, came together to work on creating a joint technical report that addressed the use of low-carbon, alternative fuels for our fleet.

This report takes a deep look at our current technical specifications across our fleet and at existing technologies from which we could benefit, putting forward a detailed recommendation of the steps we need to take towards Goal #1, achieving carbon neutrality by 2030 or sooner. The outcomes so far? We have gained our first emission test results, and are currently in the testing phase of implementing an alternative fuel across our ships which already indicates a significant potential decrease in our emissions. We have also approved the installation of both energy and fuel vs. speed consumption meters across the entire fleet. And there’s still plenty more to come.

–Julie Higgins, Sustainability Officer for Uniworld