Environmental Policy

Weekend a la Carte aims to be a carbon neutral company.  We actively manage this through a number of key initiatives:

We track our own carbon footprint, try and find ways of reducing it, and contribute to projects to reduce our carbon effect.

We are the only Tour operator to offer a shared environment protection scheme. We track all our client’s journeys and our ‘Joint responsibility offset scheme’ entails us paying for the CO2 offset of the return journey if the client undertakes to offset the outward leg. We have CO2 emission calculators for each of our destinations and offer customers this option at time of booking.

The proceeds are channeled into projects that will make a long term environmental impact and where we can benefit local communities. We work closely with Carbon Footprint and in particular their reforestation of parts of the Great Rift Valley in Kenya. This valuable project meets a number of objectives both environmental andsocio economic, namely:

• Offset CO2 emissions through significant tree planting
• Protect and provide new wildlife habitats
• Create a brighter future for project team members including orphans and people living with HIV / AIDS 

For further information you can follow this link:

http://www.carbonfootprint.com/planting_trees_in_Kenya.html

• The travel industry like any Brochure based industry can be very wasteful. We do not produce holiday brochures for this reason and work with our clients to provide the confidence that the internet is a perfectly reliable and friendly way of browsing and booking a holiday.
  
  
• We continually invest in computer software that allows us to manage data internally with continual reductions in our need for paper.
  
  
• Staff are empowered and encouraged to work from home where possible to reduce journeys and C02 emissions

Social Responsibility

• Weekend a la Carte offers a tailor made travel service and as such we rely heavily on our partners in the markets we operate in to deliver the exact service our clients demand. Our Partner selection policy is demanding due to the level of service we are proud to provide. The result is the use of a high percentage of individual operators or small local companies who are passionate about their countries and for whom we represent in some cases a large part of their livelihoods. Our focus on small number, high quality tourism allows these individuals to reduce the tourism footprint, expose our clients in a more involved manner to local culture while earning a decent return for their efforts.
• The UK tourism industry is one of the most sophisticated in the world and our on going feedback programme demonstrates that the learning gained through serving our clients helps or partners to better understand and manage the opportunities for lower impact tourism in the future

Economic Responsibility

• Weekend a la Carte deal, where possible, with individuals, small businesses and non chain hotels, so that tourism benefits the local communities at a grass roots level. With our support local communities can benefit from our focus on the quality of experience for a smaller number of clients rather than the impersonal, environmental impacting service attached to mass tourism
• With our carbon offset scheme we also look at projects that generate local employment in impoverished regions thereby achieving twin aims of environment and economic advantage.