Erna Low Reflects On Sustainability Efforts

British tour operator Erna Low has been reflecting on their sustainabity efforts, they say:

"We are fully aware that we are a company that runs holidays to the snow and by virtue of what we do, we are not an eco-friendly business. This is no secret and we certainly do not pretend to be perfect.

We also know that the destinations we love SO MUCH are some of the most vulnerable to climate change; with unpredictable weather, receding glaciers and shorter seasons becoming the unfortunate norm.

This Earth Day, we want to face our impact and set an intention, business-wide, to do what we can to influence positively and ensure our sustainability journey is always evolving.

This includes encouraging awareness and action within our customer community and for that reason, we have built our very own travel sustainability calculator.

FIRST AND FOREMOST, we promise to never greenwash or make empty promises. We would rather acknowledge not being perfect rather than pretending to be for brand spin. We commit to complete honesty and transparency as we strive to pave the way towards a more sustainable future.

Actions we are taking:

• SCALING OUR OFF-SETTING: For the last 5 years we’ve included carbon offsetting in all of our passenger bookings for our sister brand, We Are NUCO (a student snowsports travel brand which takes almost 20,000 people to the Alps every year). This means that every single one of these passengers has had their travel, accommodation and ski-lift carbon footprint offset. We now want to roll this out into all of the brands that we work with including Erna Low. Offsetting isn’t a solution in itself, but we believe it’s a first step while we work on reducing our footprint.
• CONSTANTLY RE-EVALUATING: We work with Carbon Footprint and have so far offset over 10,000 tonnes of CO2e, with more incoming for the next season and beyond. In the past our offsetting has gone towards projects such as Chilean hydroelectricity and Indian solar panels. We are always re-evaluating which projects are most relevant and checking their certifications, which can sometimes be tricky in the opaque offsetting world.
• FACT FINDING: In 2023, we conducted a survey to understand how our passengers feel about climate change and we intend to shape our policies and communications around this, supporting their concerns and doing what we can to mitigate. You can see the results of that survey here.
• DUE DILIGENCE: We work hard to ensure the stakeholders and partners we collaborate with can evidence an aligned commitment to change; encouraging all to drive towards this collective mission regardless of their stage of journey. In particular, we ask all brand partners to detail their positive impact policies (sometimes learning from them!)
• STARTING AT HOME: It starts at home and we have also made efforts across our offices in both Manchester and York to make our HQs more sustainable. Office policies cover switching to renewable energy suppliers, encouraging electric cars, thorough recycling and composting, plastic-shunning (bye-bye plastic milk bottles, welcome back glass delivery and collection!), refillable environmentally-friendly cleaning products and Fair Wear and climate-neutral staff stash.

What we would like to do in the future:

• Further reduction steps we would like to implement in the future are:
• Diversifying our offering to include more environmentally friendly options.
• Encouraging suppliers to develop greener strategies and promoting these in return.
• Further using our digital capabilities to enable passengers to make greener choices- this may include in the future, displaying environmental transparency to our passengers when they are selecting a holiday."