Mtb trips and active tourism in general have a social, environmental and economic impact. We believe that we can make a positive impact by offsetting the carbon footprint of your trip.
Since the beginning of 2020 we started to offset the carbon footprint produced by our trips. This includes all ground transportation, accommodation and food. We have meticulously calculated our carbon footprint and have decided to compensate our footprint through the organisation Cero CO2. This organisation converts our footprint into an economic equivalent and then directly supports CO2 capture projects. Of the projects that CeroCO2 works with, we have decided to offset our carbon footprint by supporting a small community reforestation project in Nicaragua.
This project works with small producers supporting them to reforest part of their farms. In this way, we not only help mitigate climate change but also improve the conditions and livelihoods of the participants. You can see the details of the project here and watch a short explanatory video here.
We know that CO2 compensation is not a definitive solution but it is an effective and concrete way to mitigate our environmental impact. We remain committed to reducing our emissions and our medium-term goal is to eliminate them completely.
We have already made some positive changes to our company.
- We have declared war on single-use plastic and we want to reduce non-recyclable packaging to zero. Minimising waste to the maximum will be a constant in our operations.
- We have started using electric bikes for all our local journeys that do not require the use of a minibus. We will also try to optimise all group transfers and eliminate those that are not necessary.
- We promote local, seasonal and local consumption and ask all our clients and partners to join us in our culture of sustainability, cooperation and respect for the environment.
We have subscribed to the ‘Climate Community’ (Comunidad #por el clima in Spanish) initiative where we are committed to take action to reduce our negative impact. Our public profile is https://porelclima.es/CBEnduroland
We want to minimise the negative impact that our activities have on the environment and on this planet that welcomes and feeds us. Let’s enjoy and take care of this gift that is life. We can all do something to make the world a little bit better.
Enjoy the trip / Enjoy the ride.
To obtain this calculation, we will define the scope of our company based on the activity we carry out, since it is this which basically produces the entire carbon footprint we want to compensate for.
Our activity is limited exclusively to carrying out guided mtb and trekking trips. We do not have a physical office. As part of our core ethics and values from the start of 2020 we are going to make a CFP calculation for every client that visits CBEL.
We will define as precisely as possible the carbon footprint of each of our clients and we will offset it.
As part of this commitment we have joined the #for the climate Community (Comunidad #por el clima in Spanish) initiative. We are also committed to reducing our virtual office and personal carbon footprint in the coming years.
Our public profile is https://porelclima.es/CBEnduroland
Therefore, to calculate our carbon footprint we will follow these steps:
- Business scope definition
- Time period
- Data collection / emission factors
- Calculations
- Business scope definition
Costa Blanca Enduroland is a small company dedicated to organize and run mountain bike and hiking trips in Alicante. It was created by José Miguel Molina López, a certified mountain sports technician/guide and registered as a nature guide in the Spanish tax regime for self-employed workers. We work under the umbrella of Tribike Travel, a small local travel agency with registration CV-Mm-2230-A, which is in charge of administration, tax management and payments.
To define the exact scope of our impact, we will base our calculations on the activity we carry out: organization and realization of week-long mountain bike and hiking trips in the Marina Alta and Marina Baja region in the province of Alicante. These trips include transfers to and from the airport, shuttles to the start of the routes and logistical support, accommodation in a 4-star hotel, and meals on a half-board basis (breakfast and lunch). To calculate the carbon footprint we will also include dinners that clients have on their own.
We will calculate the carbon footprint produced by this activity as a whole for each client.
We have our own nine-seater vehicle Opel Vivaro diesel for our trips.
- Period
We started the data collection, calculation and compensation at the beginning of 2020. Once the values of each customers carbon footprint has been calculated, we will offset the footprint of all the groups as they arrive.
- Data collection / emission factors:
- Accommodation: Hotel Cap Negret or Hotel Tossal d’Altea. 4 stars category. 7 nights in standard double / single room.
- Food: Breakfast buffet at the hotel. Mediterranean style picnic lunch with all products from local or Spanish origin. We will consider an average Spanish diet, not organic, but with a large percentage of local products and all from national origin. Dinners generally follow the pattern of an average Spanish diet.
- Transportation: A total of 530 km including airport transfers and shuttles with clients and bicycles to the beginning of the routes and as support throughout the trip. These are made in an Opel Vivaro Diesel nine-seater van. According to MITECO and IDAE (Spanish public national institution for diversification and saving of Energy) cataloguing, its emission factor is 163g CO2 / km. Data obtained from the IDAE database and detailed below (through the link you can go and make the appropriate checks in the IDAE database):
Opel Vivaro COMBI 9 plazas L1 (corto) Total acristalado 2.900 Kg 1.6 CDTI S/S MT6 120 cv MY19
Energy class: B
Consumption (l/100km) minimum / maximum: 6.9 / 7.3
Emissions (g CO2/km) minimum / maximum: 163.0 / 163.0
The routes and their data of all transportation can be found in the following google maps link:
In addition, you can have a general idea with the map and the directions attached to this document in pdf file, and more detailed with the kml files for gps.
* The vehicle documentation is also in the attached pdf file.
- Calculation
- Logding. Calculation using CeroCO2 calculators.
Hotel Cap Negret, Altea, Alicante. 4 stars category
Hotel Tossal d’Altea, Altea, Alicante. 4 stars category
7-day stay in a standard room
Total CO2eq: 310.10kg per customer
- Food. We also use the CeroCO2 calculators and we will consider an average Spanish diet, with a high content of proximity products and the rest of them from national origin. We will calculate the values for independent meals and for 7 days.
Breakfast (0,98kg), lunch and dinner (2,32kg x 2) = 5,62kg CO2eq per person per day.
Total CO2eq per client x full trip: 5,62kg CO2eq x 7 days = 39,34kg CO2eq per client
- Transportation. We include all driving we do on the trip, including airport transfers. We use our own Opel Vivaro vehicle, previously identified according to the IDAE database, whose emissions are 163g CO2 / km. We carry out our trips for a minimum of 4 clients and a maximum of 7, since a guide and a driver are necessary, so we occupy the 9 seats of the vehicle in this way. We will calculate our trip carbon footprint in the worst scenario, meaning we just have a group of 4 clients, so we will divide the vehicle’s footprint by 4.
Total kilómetres: 530km x 163g CO2/km = 86,390kg CO2eq for the vehicle for the whole trip.
Total CO2eq per person: 86,390kg / 4 = 21,60kg CO2eq per client
So the total of the Carbon footprint for a client who comes on a trip with Costa Blanca Enduroland, will be the sum of the total of accommodation, food and transportation.
Total carbón footprint per client per trip: 310,10kg + 39,34kg + 21,60kg = 371,04kg CO2eq
José m Molina
Altea 4th of june 2020