Preview: Tour Operators Launch Initiative to Support Customers Reduce Use of Plastic Bottles on Holidays

Steppes Travel part of One Bottle at a Time

13 Feb 2020

Tour Operators Launch Initiative to Support Customers Reduce Use of Plastic Bottles on Holidays

Tags: plastic free, Say No To Plastic, Responsible Travel, plastic free holidays

The One Bottle at a Time (OBaaT) initiative commits to eliminating single use plastic water bottles across all the companies' holiday operations and to also developing a guide to best practice for holiday travel worldwide.

The tour operators Experience Travel, Holiday Architects, Pura Aventura, Selective Asia, Steppes Travel and Wild Frontiers operate across six continents between them and plan to open-up membership to the OBaaT initiative later this year to all tour operators and destination management companies worldwide.

OBaaT spokesperson Nick Pulley from Selective Asia said:

“Selective Asia had worked for several years to try and eliminate single use plastic water bottles from our holidays in Asia with varying degrees of success. The logistics are challenging and we realised that we needed to work across the industry with like-minded companies and get our clients on-board to really scale-up, meet our ambitious targets and make a global difference to our planet's future. With this in mind, in 2019 we came together as a collective to share, learn and define best practise before promoting the initiative to the others in the industry.”

As well as removing one million single-use plastic water bottles from across their holiday operations, the OBaaT charter has set a target to grow its membership to 100 tour operators and travel suppliers by the end of this year.

Mr Pulley said that he believed it was the first time such an initiative had been launched on an international cross-industry basis.

Clients consume on average up to four plastic bottles a day on their holidays and OBaaT members were already working on logistics with local partners in-country to introduce best practices so that clients can safely refill their reusable water bottles. These include ground agents and destination management companies not giving out single-use bottles in vehicles instead providing clean drinking water in water containers. Hotels, lodges and camps not giving out single-use bottles in rooms and providing clean drinking water in canisters instead, as well as providing water stations in central areas. And airlines to stop giving out single-use plastic cups and water bottles.

OBaaT also sets out to empower its client base of engaged travellers to change behaviour worldwide by ensuring they are provided with safe and reusable water bottles or know to take along their own bottles.

Mr Pulley said that OBaaT would not be a regulatory body but rather a forum for sharing best practice among industry professionals. He said that as tour operators the safety and well-being of clients came first and that OBaaT was committed to providing clean and safe drinking water on their customers' holidays. He said there was also a duty of care to the destinations themselves and to only leave footprints and memories from holidays behind.

More details about the OBAAT initiative including its Charter can be found at it dedicated website https://www.onebottleatatime.org/

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