Since 2023, Swoop has been a certified B Corp. It’s our deeply held belief that we have a responsibility to consider the planet in everything we do. We’re proud to be part of a movement committed to creating positive change in the world. Choosing to travel with a B Corp for your next adventure has never been a more meaningful decision: wherever in the world you travel with one, you can be assured that your trip will be having a positive impact from contributing to local conservation projects, working with ethical businesses and taking tangible steps to address your carbon footprint.
But what exactly is a B Corp? And how does booking with one make a tangible difference to your trip and to Patagonia?
What is a B Corp?
A certified B Corporation, or B Corp, is a company that meets rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency. Swoop becoming a B Corp was an ethical decision to put the destinations we travel to and the people we work with at the heart of everything we do.
This might sound like a nice piece of greenwash, but becoming a B Corp isn’t a tickbox exercise. Becoming accredited meant that every single aspect of how we operate as a company had to be assessed by B Lab, the nonprofit that provides accreditation. It’s not an easy process – the audit assesses everything from our environmental impact, to how we treat our team members, to our relationships with our suppliers and wider role in the community.
For Swoop, achieving our B Corp status (take a look at the B Corp website to see how we scored at the end of the process) meant taking concrete actions, from amending our the company constitution to ensure we consider social and environmental factors in our decision-making, improving our gender balance by hiring more senior female managers and creating a full-time sustainability manager position.
Towards a more responsible tourism model
Responsible tourism is a buzz word that’s grown pretty stale from overuse, but what does it look like when you unpack that phrase as a B Corp?
Swoop has signed the Glasgow Declaration on climate action in tourism, committing to developing a decarbonisation plan that will halve our emissions by 2030. The first step in this was performing a complete carbon audit on our business, including calculating the carbon footprint of our travellers and their international flights.
In the past year, we saw a 3% decrease in our emissions 26,560,000 kg of CO2. This includes all our travellers’ international and domestic flights, which account for 99% of all our emissions (you can see a full breakdown of the numbers, including our methodology, in our impact report). We already offset those emissions,but we are now looking at options beyond this to reduce and mitigate our direct emissions at an even faster rate, as well as working with our partners in Chile and Argentina to best support them in their own plans to reduce their carbon footprint.
As Swoop also works in Antarctica, we’re also actively working to encourage change across the polar industry – our CEO, Luke, is a member of the climate change committee for the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO), which is working with the polar fleet with trials of e-Fuel (a truly carbon neutral fuel produced by Direct Air Capture) and the introduction of hybrid expedition ships with lower CO2 emissions.
Supporting Patagonia
Part of the ethos of being a B Corp is that business isn’t just about profit, it’s about putting people and the planet at the forefront of the way we work. We created the Swoop Conservation Fund to do just that, donating 1% of our revenue to non-profit organisations that are working in Patagonia and Antarctica to create positive impacts on the ground. In its first year, the fund donated $75,000 USD. To leverage that impact even further, we’ve recently created an online platform for our travellers to make direct donations themselves.
In Patagonia, the first organisation we’ve been supporting is Rewilding Chile. They’re an organisation we’ve loved for many years due to their work in restoring damaged ecosystems. Their most celebrated success has been in Patagonia National Park. This national part was created out of a patchwork of sheep ranches that caused massive environmental damage, but it’s now thriving again thanks to thoughtful projects including the reintroduction of keystone species. We’re currently supporting their Cape Froward project in the far south of Chile, which is creating an entirely new coastal national park on the Magellan Strait, covering some of Patagonia’s most pristine forests and a rich marine ecosystem with important feeding ground for whales.
We’re also currently supporting the work of Legado Chile Foundation in the Chilean Lake District. They’re a rewilding organisation in the town of Llanquihue that work to regenerate local wetlands that had been swallowed up by urban growth, but are now being restored to their original condition, bringing balance back to local ecosystems and creating vital natural assets for their local communities.
A community of travel companies
One thing that Swoop’s B Corp status has underscored is that while we all have an important part to play, we’re part of a much bigger picture. Much of the work in becoming a B Corp is taking a holistic look at our entire supply chain. From minimising our ecological footprint to supporting our local partners and the communities where they live and work, every action we take is designed to leave a positive mark on the destinations we visit.
Some of our partners in Patagonia have already achieved their own B Corp status and others are working towards it or developing their open sustainability strategies. But since we’re only a small part of the much larger tourism industry, we’re also proud to be members of Travel by B Corp, a collective of independent UK-based travel companies that share a belief that our industry can be a force for good and want to be leading the way in sustainable practices – and do that in a way that’s transparent and accountable to the wider community.
We know we can’t rest on our laurels. A company’s B Corp status isn’t forever – we only get to keep it for three years, so we’re already prepping for our next audit and working hard to improve our recertification score. That score is evidence of the practical steps we’ve taken and continue to take to make Swoop a force for good in the travel industry – so that we can continue to share our passion for the ends of the Earth with our travellers far into the future.
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