BCBusiness

GREENER AIR Carbon osets for air travel keep your conscience and your carbon footprint cleaner. Air Canada partners with Toronto- based Less Emissions, making it easy to tack the cost onto your •ight purchase: $30-$40, for instance, for Vancouver- Toronto return. Organizations like Osetters, based in Vancouver and Oregon, calculate the impact of driving or •ying, and oer trip or by-the-tonne osets. Swedish site Glooby combines low-cost •ight searching with the virtues of the most fuel-e…cient routes (English site priced in U.S. dollars)—because it's better to reduce than to oset. ECO-SLEEPS Does your hotel bargain come at a cost to the environment? Look for eco-labels like international Green Key, or the Audubon Society's Green Lodging Program in the U.S. (which partners with the BookDierent hotel search engine). Kelowna-based Green Tourism is a homegrown program that assesses and certi"es hotels, tour companies and attractions, plus food and drink providers. TRAVELLING LIGHT New small-group Impact Journeys, oered by sustainable travel veteran And Beyond, shows environmentally sensitive areas some luxe love. Spend a week in Phinda, South Africa, learning wildlife conservation monitoring techniques such as rhino notching and elephant collaring by day, and enjoying the perks of a butler and private chef in the evenings. Or go behind the scenes of marine conservation eorts by Oceans Without Borders, on the far northern coast of Mozambique. Out With the Greenwash C A R R Y ON ( quality time ) AS A PRINCIPAL at Reshape Strategies, one of Canada's top consultancies for urban energy and infrastruc- ture, Trent Berry thinks a lot about responsible travel, "particularly since my work involves build- ing more-sustainable cities." The German- speaking Vancouverite favours green cities like Berlin and Stockholm on extended working trips that he structures to minimize greenhouse gas emissions from air travel. For instance, last year Berry worked remotely for more than a month, combining a dozen project visits with a meeting in New York, two conferences in Europe and an extended stay in Germany–using just five flight segments. While away, he lives the same small-footprint lifestyle as he does at home. Site visits to sustainable- energy and smart-city projects with his global colleagues offer benefits he could never achieve virtually. "There is no substi- tute for seeing projects first-hand, kicking the tires and talking with both operators and users on real outcomes," says Berry, emphasizing that less-successful efforts provide as many insights as more-celebrated ones. "One-on-one, it's amaz- ing how much you can learn. These contacts are a huge value to my work and creativity." JET SETTER The term eco-tourism seems quaint in an era when travellers are concerned about everything from more- sustainable hotels to supporting businesses with responsible environmental and cultural practices by Charlene Rooke The global Sustainable 100 list for 2018 has six Canadian entries, three of them in B.C.: Vancouver, the Great Bear Rain forest and the Thompson- Okanagan region. MAY 2019 BCBUSINESS 47 WILD THINGS From South Africa (top) to below the waves, small- group Impact Journeys highlight conservation TOP: AND BEYOND; LEFT: COURTESY OF TRENT BERRY JET SETTER

• Cover