BANGKOK, 17 April 2018: A recent study showed that 60% of travel agencies involved in adventure travel still hand out single-use plastic bottle to their clients.
The US-based Adventure Travel Trade Association and Travellers Against Plastic (TAP) teamed to distribute the survey to ATTA’s database of adventure tourism businesses, worldwide.
Based on a survey of 500 people working in adventure travel agencies, who send guests to worldwide destinations, 92% said they were extremely concerned with the environmental impacts of single-use plastic bottles.
But 60% of the survey respondents reported their businesses use single-use plastic water bottles on all, or some trips, averaging two bottles per guest, per day.
That equated to 6.8 million single-use plastic water bottles annually generated by just the respondents who admitted to distributing single-use plastic bottles to their clients.
Offering clients re-useable water bottles comes with a cost, but if tour companies are serious about reducing plastic use they must accept the challenge, said ATTA.
To address the challenges, the survey included an open-ended question about what the ATTA can do to help support businesses’ efforts in curbing single-use plastic water bottles.
The top five areas identified included the need for educational materials for travellers, educational materials for the travel trade, continued advocacy and promotional campaigns to raise awareness about the issue and alternatives, identification of and access to viable alternatives and suggestions on the implementation of strategies to help secure partner and peer buy-in.
