The TreadRight Foundation and The Travel Corporation’s (TTC) family of brands have been pushing back against the use of single-use plastics this year.
TTC recently announced that from the beginning of its 2019 operating season, its brands (Trafalgar, Insight Vacations, Luxury Gold, CostSaver, Brendan Vacations, Contiki, AAT Kings, and Inspiring Journeys) will no longer make single-use plastic bottles available on their buses. These brands join sister companies Uniworld, Red Carnation Hotels and U River Cruises, all of which have already removed plastic water bottles from their operations previously.
With single-use plastic water bottles no longer available on its coaches, TTC has committed to eliminating all non-essential single-use plastics across all operations by 2022, across all of its brands. This latest initiative is expected to reduce plastic waste by several hundred thousand plastic bottles per year.
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The company has also produced videos such as the one above encouraging travellers to be mindful about not using single-use plastics unnecessarily. In addition, TTC’s partners are moving away from using non-biodegradable name tags and have replaced single-use plastic luggage tags with reusable, durable ones.
Contiki is also trialling a long-lasting silicon one-litre water bottle, with a 300-use charcoal filter, on a number of its trips this year around the world. The bottle is reusable and foldable, and its filter ensures clean, safe drinking water at all times.
The trial will be shared with other TTC brands, as the long-term goal is to ensure all travellers have a refillable water bottle with them at all times.
Other partners that are making a difference include Red Carnation Hotels, a long-standing supporter of the removal of single-use plastics across all of their 17 (soon to be 20) luxury hotels, which has banned single use plastic water bottles, in addition to more than 20 everyday plastic convenience items from all properties, as has Uniworld onboard its ships.
To highlight the importance of the need to eliminate single-use plastics and create a more sustainable travel industry, TTC teams around the world mobilised community clean-ups, sustainability education seminars, and volunteer projects for the whole of April (Earth Month).
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