Bright Ideas in Travel 2024

"White Desert has been conducting small, luxury expeditions to Antarctica since 2005, and in October 2024, the tour operator launched the White Desert Foundation, which will help support ecosystem restoration and climate change research on the white continent and beyond. The foundation has already issued its first grants: funding a team of scientists in Antarctica and a blue carbon project just outside Cape Town, from where the company flies guests to its low-impact Antarctic camps. White Desert has been CarbonNeutral-certified since 2007 with the help of offsets, but is taking steps to reduce its own emissions wherever possible, including by trialing and using sustainable aviation fuel—the first operator in Antarctica to do so—which the company hopes to roll out across its aircraft over the next three to five years. In the meantime, the planes have their own role to play in supporting environmental and climate research: each season, about 50% of the people White Desert transports to the continent are scientists, which adds up to around 150 scientists a year."