Travel Industry Graded on Tackling Climate Change: Hold the Champagne
How does your company crawl?
Photo: Climate Counts
by Dorinda Elliott
When it comes to evaluating how the travel industry is addressing the climate crisis--i.e., are companies reducing their carbon footprints?--it's hard to come by statistics, so we were excited that Climate Counts, a nonprofit dedicated to monitoring environmental practices in the corporate world, decided to take a look for the first time at hotels and airlines. The nonprofit, which systematically scores companies' performances based on publicly available information, judged six hotel companies and 13 airlines, scoring each on 22 criteria, ranging from the monitoring of energy usage to whether or not the companies set targets for reduction, their achievements in reducing energy consumption, and policy activism.
Of the six hotel companies that were ranked, Marriott, which received Condé Nast Traveler's World Savers Award last year for its environmental and community initiatives, received the best score, with 40 points out of 100; Starwood came in second with a distant 24, followed by Hilton with 23. Carlson received 11 points and Wyndham got 10. The lowest score was given to Hyatt, with only 7 points. What made the difference? "Marriott and Starwood are measuring their emissions in a systematic way," says Wood Turner, Climate Counts project director. "You have to know what energy is being used before you can begin to reduce it."
That said, there may be no reason for Marriott to break out the Champagne. Overall, the hotels, Marriott included, scored abysmally compared to Climate Counts' previous rankings of best companies in other industries. In the apparel industry, for example, Nike scored 82 points, and in the household product industry, Procter & Gamble got 69 points. GE scored 71 points in the media category (a sector in which the conglomerate has significant holdings). In the food category, Stonyfield Farm got 78 and Unilever scored 75.
Not too surprisingly, U.S. airlines did even worse than the hotel companies in Climate Counts' listing. Northwest, with the highest score, got only 39 points, followed by Southwest with 37, and American with 35. At the bottom, SkyWest Air and US Airways got 0 points, presumably because they don't bother to track carbon emissions at all.
What's the purpose of this exercise in humiliation--whoops, recognition? Climate Counts hopes that by highlighting winners and laggers, it will encourage more travel companies to focus on reducing their energy consumption. "We're trying to show companies that they can reduce carbon emissions and still make money," says Turner. "These companies have a large carbon footprint, and they can be a big part of the solution." Given today's economic woes, perhaps there will be more incentive in the travel industry to save money on energy use. We hope to see the numbers going up next year.
Further reading:
* Climate Counts
* 2008 Condé Nast Traveler World Savers Awards
* Video: Matt Damon addresses the World Savers Congress
* Dorinda Elliott talks to Matt Damon about Africa and his "Good Work Hunting"
* Make a Difference: Regular coverage of social responsibility and travel
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