The Carbon Literacy Project is a low-carbon culture change project, working with everyone where they live, work and study. It is founded on a day-long training experience that leaves participants informed, empowered, inspired and taking their own actions to help resolve the climate emergency. Educating your team about carbon emissions is one of the most effective ways to engage your workforce and lower your company’s carbon footprint in the long term. ecollective have developed travel industry specific training that we have delivered for our members. This comprehensive 8-hour accredited course helps you develop the skills to identify and deliver climate action for your business. Following assessment, your team will become carbon literacy certified by the Carbon Literacy project. Contact us to register your interest.

Since our inception in 2020, we have partnered with ecollective, whose down to earth, no-nonsense approach to carbon resonated with us here at The Conscious Travel Foundation. ecollective use science-based tools to accurately measure the entire carbon footprint of your business efficiently and without fuss, presenting the data in an easily digestible format and help you build a strategy to reduce your carbon footprint until you reach Net-Zero. Using their knowledge of decarbonisation rates in the travel industry and where your organisation’s carbon hotspots lie, we will recommend the most effective carbon reduction strategies. Contact Charlie and the ecollective team to find out more.

The Climate Portfolio is open to members of The Conscious Travel Foundation, with two different tiers of contribution. You can choose to contribute to the core climate portfolio as selected by The Foundation or create your own portfolio of projects aligned to the Foundation’s Integrity Approach, with a branded platform for your business. Whichever you choose, your contributions will be linked to The Conscious Travel Foundation so we can track impact across all our members.

The Climate Portfolio was created with travel agent, operators, and sales and marketing members in mind. These were the member groups that expressed particular interest in carbon mitigation solutions for unavoidable emissions after reduction — particularly flights and transfers for client journeys, press trips and events .

Whilst our portfolio is open to all members, one of the main barriers to carbon reduction is cost, as it involves significant outlay to take action such as installing solar panels, boosting insulation, buying heat exchange units and switching to an electric fleet of vehicles. As recommended by ecollective, hotel and lodge members, and DMCs with their own inventory, would be best to spend the money on making a tangible difference to their carbon footprint first and foremost. Ringfence the money you would have spent on quality projects and save to invest in your eco-credentials and resilience, before looking to invest in biodiversity and repair projects.

No, the goal of our Climate Portfolio is not to claim that our members’ carbon emissions have been “offset”. Rather than being a “compensation” approach, its goal is to contribute to our global efforts to achieve net zero carbon emissions. We have aligned the programme with the Science Based Target Initiative’s (SBTi) ‘Above and Beyond’ Beyond Value Chain Mitigation framework.

No. There is no way to guarantee that the impact of carbon emitted has been ‘erased’ permanently, so we don’t support carbon neutral or similar claims. What this scheme does is allow members to contribute to high-impact climate projects that mitigate their emissions alongside their efforts to reduce them.

To give our members confidence in the projects they can fund The Conscious Travel Foundation has selected three high impact carbon projects for its approved climate portfolio. Members on the “collaborator” level tier will be required to allocate funds to these projects (funds split evenly between them). Members on the “bespoke” tier can choose to adopt these projects or equivalent projects that align to our Integrity Principles.

We have chosen projects with the highest likelihood of having real and lasting impact. For example, we have selected a biochar carbon removal project, because the carbon is removed and stored for hundreds of years. The greenhouse gas destruction project seeks out and destroys important “super pollutant” greenhouse gases. The third project distributes efficient cookstoves, reducing carbon emissions, improving air quality and enhancing the lives of local people. We have aligned our portfolio to the ICVCM’s Core Carbon Principles designed to ensure carbon credits create real, verifiable, and additional climate impact.

Pinwheel carefully filters and assesses projects to ensure that they are proper and impactful. Pinwheel undertakes detailed impact rating and due diligence of each project to establish that they are a) delivering high impact work, b) undertaken by proper organisations that are properly constituted and governed and, c) manage risk appropriately for their project type. We have aligned our portfolio to the ICVCM’s Core Carbon Principles designed to ensure carbon credits create real, verifiable, and additional climate impact.

Carbon offsetting and carbon credits have become the subject of controversial debate, from concerns over additionality and effectiveness, to credits being a licence to pollute. The offset approach, based on compensation of emissions, is increasingly being replaced with beyond value chain mitigation (BVCM) as set out by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). 

Within BVCM, contribution approaches are high impact and lower risk, as they focus on funding projects with the emphasis on making impact, rather than the accumulation of carbon credits to enable a (now discredited) carbon neutral claim.

The Conscious Travel Foundation recommends that members take responsibility for their emissions (scopes 1, 2 and 3) at a carbon price of $20/£15 a ton.

The $20/£15 figure aligns to the guidance on setting ‘money-for-ton’ carbon fees set in the Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi) Net Zero Standard 2.0 proposals of November 2025 for ‘recognised’ status. Taking responsibility for the full emissions of the organisation aligns to the SBTi responsibility level for ‘leadership’ status. Given that travel is both carbon intensive and, in aviation, deploys the hardest to abate emissions (with few levers to pull to reduce this inside operations and supply chain), there is a strong case for the travel sector to take full responsibility for the emissions outside of the value chain.

Whilst best practice requires an organisation to measure and take responsibility for ongoing emissions, as set out above, The Conscious Travel Foundation recognises this will not be feasible for all member organisations and that, for smaller organisations in particular, the costs of measurement may be inappropriately high versus the emissions measured. The Conscious Travel Foundation has therefore set a £2,000 floor to enable even smaller member businesses to participate in the programme.

There are multiple ways in which members might create the required funding. The Conscious Travel Foundation recommends members consider:

1. Best practice is to implement a ‘carbon tax’ of at least $20/£15 on scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions across the business

2. Allocating a fixed sum from profits or defining a share of revenue/profits

3. Charge a per-booking, percentage of trip value (or similar)

4. Charge a carbon fee per trip (when emissions are measured)

Regardless of the mechanism for creating the funding, members should endeavour to achieve an equivalent responsibility as option 1. The Conscious Travel Foundation and Pinwheel are happy to support members as they make these decisions.

90% of your contribution will go directly to the projects, with 10% kept for monitoring and evaluation by Pinwheel. This programme is delivered through direct funding of projects, to ensure transparency and that funding reaches the people delivering the projects on the ground. Pinwheel does not acquire or trade carbon credits with the purpose of selling them at a higher value at a later date.

Yes. You will receive the discount TCTF member rate from the month you join the Foundation.

Members on the collaborative tier do not pay a platform fee. Members on the bespoke tier pay a platform fee of £150/mth (50% of which funds The Conscious Travel Foundation directly). This represents at least a £2,400 annual saving on Pinwheel’s rate card.