Carbonclick helps Galapagos airport become sustainability leader

The Galapagos islands have become a sort of symbol for biodiversity, not for nothing they are forever associated to Charles Darwin and our understanding of the evolution of species. It is no coincidence, thus, that their main gateway, the aptly named “Galapagos Ecological Airport” wants to lead by example.

The airport uses 100% renewable energy use and its terminal is built entirely of recycled materials. It was also the first airport in the world to obtain the LEED Gold certification by the US Green Building Council and first in Latin America & the Caribbean to reach Level 3+ as per the Airport Carbon Accreditation programme.

It is in this context that, a few days ago Galapagos airport and New Zealand-based Carbonclick announced a new project to facilitate the offsetting of emissions by passengers that travel to the Galapagos.

To be clear, this is a voluntary scheme, but it is interesting to see how Carbonclick is bringing individual offsetting programmes to airports, something that many airlines are already offering on their booking processes.

So, I got curious about how this works from the point of view of an individual traveler flying to the islands (unfortunately not my case anytime soon!)

The idea is to use the multiple touch points throughout the passenger experience to get travelers to offset. A big question that remains in my mind, though, are those touch points are really suitable to get the traveller to reach for the credit card even when the amounts at stake are modest? (For example, offsetting a return flight from Quito, Ecuador’s capital came at $3.94, although you can choose to offset up to 200% of your footprint if you feel inclined to do so)

Maybe if you make it compelling enough. At the very least, I can say I was positively impressed by the user-friendliness of the whole process when I tested it. There is an easy to use calculator and simple two step process to contribute to a basket of environmental projects (which have also a social angle) selected by Carbonclick. according to a specific, objective methodology.

It gets more interesting when you realize that, for the sake of transparency, you can keep track of all (anonymized) transactions that go into each of those projects. Social proof anyone?

By the way, sustainability at airports is a topic which, by the way, I had the chance to cover in this CNN article back in 2017.