Coach holidays that don't cost the earth
Certified 100% Carbon Neutral
Like you, we love to travel. Done well, holidays allow us to explore, have fun and learn in ways we simply cannot if we stay at home. It is also a great way to meet new people and take a break from the stresses and strains of day-to-day life. But our planet is in crisis and we recognise things have to change if we are to protect the planet for future generations. The problem is how to do this without giving up the travel we love? Our solution is Leisuretime by Toureasy. We are here to help you balance your love of travel with the increasingly urgent need to protect the sights and destinations that we all so enjoy visiting. We do that by ensuring all our holidays along with our entire back-office operation are 100% carbon neutral, giving you a certified Net Zero holiday every time. We also believe that sustainability should come as standard and be accessible for all, which means you shouldn’t have to do anything different or pay extra for it. That is why we guarantee that our Net Zero holidays won’t cost you any more than travelling with any other operator.
We have developed a ‘Climate Action Plan’, which sets out in more detail our intentions to reduce carbon emissions over the next decade. Please click here to see our latest Action Plan. We will update on progress each year.
Whilst we along with our suppliers and partners are investing both time and money in reducing carbon emissions we are not there yet - and neither is the technology needed to deliver Net Zero coach travel. But the planet is in crisis today and we have to act now to try and avoid making the situation even worse. We cannot wait. Whilst carbon offsetting is certainly not the long-term solution to the climate emergency it is, in our opinion, the best and only way for us to deliver on our commitment to help you continue to enjoy fabulous holiday experiences today without further damaging the sights and destinations that we all love to visit for those that come after us. To do this, we have invested in a tool that allows us to accurately calculate all of the carbon emissions associated with our holidays. We are also the first coach tour operator in the country to be entirely paperless and we certainly haven’t invested in fancy offices or other things that we don’t think we really need to deliver great holidays. We actively look to work with suppliers that share our commitment to sustainability and offer support to all our suppliers on their own journey to reduce emissions. All of this means that our entire business is certified as Carbon Neutral by Carbon Footprint Ltd who undertake annual audits to make sure that we have our calculations right and verify that we truly have removed from the atmosphere all of the carbon associated with every aspect of our operations.
As the UK's first and only sustainable coach tour operator, we're dedicated to balancing the love of travel with the need to protect our precious planet. And what better day to celebrate this committment than Earth Day 2024? So to mark this special occasion, we decided that for every booking made, we would plant a tree in Wales. Our customers bookings and support mean that we will be planting a whopping 100 trees in Wales in the autumn, helping to protect our planet for the future. Each tree planted helps to offset our environmental impact by "breathing" in CO2 emissions as it grows. The trees also provide sustainable habitat for wildlife and will enhance the natural landscape with native broad-leaved trees.
One of the best bits of being carbon neutral is that we get to choose the specific projects we wish to support through our offset programme. Over time, these projects will increasingly be chosen by Leisuretime by Toureasy’s customers too. Leisuretime by Toureasy only invests in high quality, verified, carbon offset projects that are recognised by Carbon Footprint Ltd. They all meet the stringent requirements of the Quality Assurance Standard (QAS) for Carbon Offsetting and also use one or more of the following credit systems to evidence their positive impact on the environment:
These are some of the projects that we invested in this year:
We are helping to protect the Amazon Rainforest – the largest remaining rainforest in the world. The Amazon is known for its amazing biodiversity; containing 10% of all species. The rainforest is home to some endangered species that rely on it for their survival. Our offsets are being used in the Amazon through the Brazilian Amazon Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) project. This is working to prevent unplanned deforestation in native forests, which has occurred due to logging, squatting and attempts to implement pastures. The project is expected to avoid over 22 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gas emissions over a 40-year period. This will be achieved by managing the land in the form of a "private conservation reserve", through rigorous monitoring and enforcement. From 2012 the project has scaled-up its monitoring activities by employing and properly training local villagers for monitoring and enforcement activities to protect this unique part of the world.
This project aims to disseminate over 8,000 improved energy efficient cookstoves to homes in Malawi. The stoves are more efficient and use less wood for household cooking and heating than traditional stoves. They are locally made using local materials wherever possible, resulting in local income generation and the acquisition of new skills for local people. The project promotes improved kitchen and firewood management practices, and the improved technology and practices are intended to replace less efficient technologies and practices resulting in biomass conservation and a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere from the burning of solid biomass.
Based in a region prone to poverty and severe drought, this initiative tackles one of the major causes of deforestation in Brazil: illegal logging. It is located is in the Caatinga, an exclusively Brazilian biome, which occupies around 844,453km², around 11% of the whole country territory. Despite being rich in natural resources, the Caatinga is one of the most threatened ecosystems on the planet. In a region where the shortage of rivers leads to less access to electric energy, native firewood and charcoal account for 30% of the total energy utilised in the industries of the region, which has intensified the local deforestation. The Buenos Aires project has switched the fuel used by a red ceramic factory from illegal firewood to agricultural and industrial residues. This biomass would have otherwise been discarded as waste, so the fuel switch not only transforms residues into something useful, but also enables many local individuals to make a living - or complement their income – by supplying biomass waste directly to the factories. This project alleviates deforestation, avoids greenhouse gas emissions and promotes a more sustainable supply chain: it does this whilst also improving the livelihoods of local communities and employees. Making good, better.
This is a small 4.8 MW hydro power project located at Village Veer, Taluka Purandar, and District Pune, Maharashtra, across the river Nira which is a tributary of Bhima River in the Krishna basin. The water stored by the irrigation project is let down into the two canals on both the flanks of river through separate canal irrigation outlets for irrigation as well as for drinking purposes. The project generates renewable electricity (Hydro power) and exports it to NEWNE (Northern, Eastern, Western and North-Eastern) grid of India. Hence, it reduces the dependency on fossils fuels which are pre-dominantly used for electricity generation in India and helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Prior to the project being implemented, the Veer Dam was utilized for irrigational purposes in the adjoining areas. The project is implemented in the existing reservoir with no change in the volume of the reservoir. The project is expected to supply around 11.06 million kWh of energy resulting in an average emission reduction of 10,832 tCO2e per year of operation.
The purpose of this project is to supply the wind-generated electricity to the grid of the Republic of South Africa (RSA).The installed capacity of the wind farm is 144MW, and consists of 96 wind turbines and the associated infrastructure. The wind farm is located in the Pixley Ka Seme District close to the town of De Aar in the Northern Cape Province of the RSA, approximately 30 km northeast of the Longyuan Mulilo De Aar Maanhaarberg Wind Energy Facility. The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the electricity generation at the wind farm will amount to zero. The reduction of GHG emissions as a result of the project implementation will be achieved due to reduction of CO2 emissions from combustion of fossil fuel at the existing grid connected powered plants project (in South Africa these dominated by coal-fired power plants) and plants which would likely be built in the absence of the project. The total GHG emission reductions at the end of the crediting period are expected to be 4,339,290 tCO2e, annual average GHG emission reductions are 433,929 tCO2e/year.
In addition to these projects, we are also supporting Carbon Footprint’s Freedom Flight Prize The Freedom Flight Prize will be awarded for the first zero carbon emission plane capable of carrying 100+ passengers across the Atlantic. The aim is to generate a multi-million pound prize fund to motivate and accelerate the development of truly sustainable aviation.
For information on past projects we have invested in, please click here
The climate emergency doesn’t recognise borders and whilst holidays and short breaks by coach are the most sustainable way to travel, we recognise our responsibility to do so much more. That is why we have signed up to Tourism Declares, an initiative that supports tourism businesses, organisations and individuals across the world that are committed to taking action to combat climate change. By signing up to Tourism Declares, Leisuretime by Toureasy is not only lending its’ voice to others in declaring a climate emergency, but we are committed to taking purposeful action to reduce our carbon emissions over time and in line with the advice from The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to cut global carbon emissions to 55% below 2017 levels by 2030.
We have developed a ‘Climate Action Plan’, which sets out in more detail our intentions to reduce carbon emissions over the next decade.
Share an initial public declaration of our ‘Climate Action Plan’, and update on progress each year.
Accept current IPCC advice stating the need to cut global carbon emissions to 55% below 2017 levels by 2030 in order to keep the planet within 1.5 degrees of warming. We’ll ensure our ‘Climate Emergency Plan’ represents actions designed to achieve this as a minimum, through delivering transparent, measurable and increasing reductions in the total carbon emissions per customer arising from our operations and the short breaks and holidays sold by us.
Encourage our suppliers and partners to make the same declaration; sharing best practice amongst peers; and actively participate in the Tourism Declares community.
Advocate for change. We recognise the need for system change across the industry to accelerate a fair and realistic transition towards carbon-free tourism. Leisuretime by Toureasy aims to play a leading role in driving change across the coach tourism sector, in particular.
The Glasgow Declaration is a catalyst for increased urgency about the need to accelerate climate action in tourism and to secure strong commitments to support the global goals to halve emissions over the next decade and reach Net Zero emissions as soon as possible before 2050. Over 450 organizations, including Toureasy, have become signatories of the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism to accelerate climate action. By becoming signatories, organisations agree to implement the commitments detailed in the Glasgow Declaration, notably:
Everyone in the tourism sector has a role to play in accelerating climate action and therefore all tourism stakeholders (legal entities) can become signatories of the Glasgow Declaration. Toureasy is proud to have been one of the first! Please click here for further information.
Unless you can holiday exclusively on foot or by bike, there is no more sustainable way to get away than on a comfortable, modern coach because of the number of people they can carry and their increasingly clean and efficient engines. The simple truth is that the more people choose to travel by coach, the better it is for our planet. It would only take a 15% increase in coach travel across the UK to reduce carbon emissions by over a quarter of a million tonnes*. Now that's a lot less carbon in the atmosphere.
So, the more people who choose to travel by coach on a short break or holiday rather than travel any other way, the happier our planet will be. And because Leisuretime by Toureasy is the only UK coach tour operator to fully offset its carbon emissions, it goes without saying that both we and the planet will be even happier if you choose to travel with us! Whilst the coach industry continues to invest in research and technology that will ultimately deliver coaches powered by electricity or even hydrogen, these vehicles are not available to us today. The coaches we use for our tours are some of the cleanest available, but they still use diesel fuel because there is currently no alternative. That is why we deliver our carbon neutral commitment through high quality, responsible, carbon offsets.