Mastercard to measure carbon footprints

by Chris Owen on
MasterCard has teamed up with environmental group Brighter Planet to offer corporate customers carbon footprint reports. By capturing and analyzing travel-related carbon emissions based on card transactions, the program hopes to help companies go green.

“Travel is a huge driver of costs and carbon emissions,” Brighter Planet CEO, Patti Prairie told Forbes. “As much as 30 or 40 percent of total operations for some companies.”

Based on “standards-compliant” calculation methodologies, the service will let companies track, compare, and report emissions metrics across organizational divisions, MasterCard said.

Brighter Planet’s software is already used by sites like Yaktrak, which allows users to plug-in a FedEx tracking number to find out how much CO2 was emitted to deliver a package.

The MasterCard application of Brighter Planet software looks at cardholder purchases such as flights, car rentals, hotel reservations the translates them into carbon dioxide emissions. Supplied with that information, businesses can manage their carbon footprint and increase sustainable practices.

The MasterCard program will automatically look at several billion calculations each year at no additional charge to customers. Those add up to $240 billion in travel-related expenses spent by U.S. businesses annually.

Flickr photo by jon smith ‘una nos lucror’

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Record numbers of humpback whales spotted near Antarctica

by Kraig Becker on

For many travelers, whale-spotting is a moving, and sometimes life altering, experience. Those massive, yet graceful, creatures are unlike anything else on Earth, and getting the opportunity to see one up close is an experience that shouldn’t be missed. One of the more common species, the humpback whale, have recently been spotted in record numbers off the coast of Antarctica, in a display that has even left scientists speechless.

Humpbacks, like most whales, are migratory in nature, traveling as much as 16,000 miles each year. During the summer months, they’ll typically move into the colder polar regions in search of krill, tiny shrimp like creatures that are their favorite meals. Researchers often travel to those regions as well in hopes of getting the opportunity to study the creatures in their natural habitat.

Over the course of the past two years, scientists have been visiting the Southern Ocean with the hope of spotting humpbacks and observing their behavior. In both May of 2009 and 2010, they recorded record numbers of whales there, at a time when the giant mammals should have been heading for warmer waters. In fact, in one instance, they counted, 306 humpback whales in the Wilhelmina Bay, a small body of water that falls on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula.

While seeing that many whales in one place is indeed a stunning sight, and a fantastic research opportunity, researchers warn that it could mean dire consequences for the ecosystem around Antarctica, which is one of the bellweather locations for climate change. As the region around the Antarctic continent warms up, the sea ice is retreating very quickly. The krill use that sea ice as a nursery for their young, and without it they aren’t shielded from the massive predators that eat them by the ton. That could mean that the whales could potentially decimate the krill population, leaving themselves little to eat in the future.

But for now, it seems that the humpback population is not only healthy, but thriving, and travelers to Antarctica may have unprecedented opportunities to see them up close.

[Photo courtesy Whit Welles via WikiMedia]

Rwanda pledges to save the environment

by Kraig Becker on

The United Nations has declared 2011 as the “Year of the Forests” as it continues to work to encourage nations across the globe to take sustainable actions to protect the planet’s woodlands. One of the first countries to answer the call to action is Rwanda, which has laid out an ambitious plan to protect its jungles, even as it struggles to develop economically.

As most people know, Rwanda was devastated by civil war and genocide during the 1990’s. That struggle extended throughout the country and caused untold damage to its natural resources, including the rainforests that are home to a host of amazing creatures – not the least of which are the endangered mountain gorillas. Since that time, Rwanda has been experiencing plenty of growth and prosperity however, with the economy making strides forward in recent years and the population expanding at a rapid pace. Those conditions have put demands on the country’s natural resources, including the jungles. One report says that the Gishwati rainforest, for example, has shrunk in size by as much as 90% since 1960.

Earlier this week the Rwandan government vowed to change that pattern. Minister of Land and Environment Stanislas Kamanzi has pledged that “By the year 2035, Rwanda will have achieved a country-wide reversal of the current degradation of soil, land, water and forest resources.” A bold statement indeed for a country that faces many challenges to its continued growth.

The pledge was met with applause by environmentalists across the planet, who say that the commitment to protecting the environment is the first of its kind from a developing country. The plan is to not only re-plant and replenish forests, but to also build an infrastructure to improve water, work on soil conservation and build more sustainable agriculture as well.

One area that may aid Rwanda in their efforts is tourism. The country is already seen as a model for how ecotourism can be put to great use, as it is viewed as one reason why the population of mountain gorillas is increasing. Visitors to their protected habitat are willing to pay a hefty sum to spend a few hours with the creatures, and that money goes directly to preserving the forests that they call home. That same approach may be extended to protecting other regions and species in the country as well.

Rwanda’s landmark pledge to protect the environment is a good thing and hopefully they’ll be able to put it into action. In the long run, it will be an important piece to the country’s continued development and its ability to support its population. As an eco-conscious traveler, that’s just the kind of place that I want to support with my dollars.

[Photo credit: d_proffer via WikiMedia Commons]


United Kingdom government does U-turn on forest sell-off

by Sean McLachlan on

Back on January 27 we reported that the government of the United Kingdom was planning on selling all of England’s publicly owned forests. Well, the English love their heritage (at least those English outside the government) and there was a huge public outcry. Half a million people signed a petition in opposition to the plan. Now the Guardian reports the government has backed down.

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman stood up before Parliament and apologized for her “wrong” decision. The forests will not be sold and new laws allowing them to be will be struck from the books. The previous law allowed for 15 percent of forests to be sold, and Ms. Spelman wasn’t clear what would happen to the forests recently put on the auction block. Apparently this isn’t a complete victory for sanity.

The sale would have affected all forests owned by the Forestry Commission in England but not the rest of the UK. The Commission owns 18 percent of all forests in England. Now the Environment Secretary will have to find another way to slash her department spending by a third, the goal she set for herself.

[Photo courtesy user tomhab via Wikimedia Commons]

England plans to sell all its public forests

by Sean McLachlan on

English environmentalists, hikers, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and pretty much everybody else is up in arms about a UK government plan to sell off all the woodlands managed by the Forestry Commission in England, the BBC reports.

The Forestry Commission manages 18 percent of all England’s forests, some 2,500 sq km (965 sq miles). A portion of the forests are already being sold to raise £100m million ($159 million).

A public poll this week found 75 percent of the public against the move.

The plan will not affect forests in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

This is the dumbest idea the UK government has come up with since selling the Royal Mail. Forests are a national heritage, not something to be sold off by privileged members of government to their old classmates from Eton. The government says that environmental and public use rights will be protected but, to use an English phrase, that’s a load of bollocks. Once the forests are in private hands, it will be much easier for private interests to undermine the laws governing them, or simply ignore the laws if the fines come out to less than they’d make turning the forests into shopping malls and housing developments. This is already standard practice in Spain, and it has ruined some of the best stretches of the Mediterranean coastline.

As a hiker who loves England’s woodland, I have grave concerns over what this will mean for people from England and around the world who go to the woods to see some of England’s most beautiful spots. A few hundred million pounds in the government’s pocket will not solve the economic crisis, or save national health care, or pay off the national debt, but it will mean that the heritage of the English people may disappear forever.

[Image courtesy user ntollervey via Wikimedia Commons]