Sustainability Movers & Shakers 2023
With the help of Black Box Partnerships, we picked 12 of the most forward-thinking organisations helping to make business travel more sustainable
SQUAKE
SQUAKE’s end-to-end solution has been designed specifically for the travel industry as a single API plug-in to power precise carbon calculations for all types of activity, including flights, car and hotel according to national and international standards. Powering accurate carbon calculations and providing tangible compensation of all travel and transport related emissions, SQUAKE’s solution is fully customisable and partners can decide which calculation framework is most relevant to their product or programme. They can also create their own compensation portfolio to be selected from SQUAKE’s curated partner network, which includes certified climate protection organisations, as well as providers of innovative climate technologies and sustainable aviation fuel providers.
Black Box Verdict: SQUAKE’s carbon calculations are customisable and we particularly love that there is a ‘freemium’ entry level for small businesses. This Berlin-based business is one to watch.
Event Cycle
Event Cycle is an innovative new business to help event and project planners reduce waste and create a positive impact. Its mission is to reduce waste post event by changing mindsets, repurposing and redistributing materials to charities and the event industry, and encouraging a change to a circular economy. Being involved at the inception of a project, it advises on rethinking the waste management systems and supports the design for the greatest impact.
Black Box Verdict: A unique concept, this business is passionate about changing mindsets in the events industry.
Responsible Futures
Responsible Futures educates, inspires and guides people and businesses to become more sustainable and socially responsible with training, webinars and consulting. Training courses are designed to give organisations an understanding of what sustainability truly entails, how it affects day-to-day operations and the achievement of business objectives. They teach the importance of sustainability and social responsibility and provide the knowledge and tools needed to make a positive impact on the environment and society. A consulting arm provides advice on carbon footprint measurement and setting SBTi targets, supporting clients on their ESG journey, plus a wide range of educational webinars.
Black Box Verdict: This business is striving to enlighten the industry with knowledge and practical solutions.
eco.mio
eco.mio enables companies to achieve their climate goals while reducing costs. Its software seamlessly integrates into any online booking tool, incentivises employees to book greener travel options and allows companies to monitor the resulting carbon and cost savings through a performance dashboard. It determines company-specific benchmark behaviour of each planned trip at the point of sale. Its algorithm considers historical booking behaviours, pricing, market availability and the company’s travel policy.
Black Box Verdict: eco.mio meets the challenge of educating travellers and driving sustainable choices.
hubli
One of the leading online booking tools for meetings, off-sites and group stays, hubli offers hubli Green, a dedicated sustainability product for business travel and meetings, which allows meeting and event planners to choose venues and locations based on the lowest CO² emissions, book sustainable spaces and remove high waste items from meetings. Users have access to a ‘Where to meet?’ console allowing them to calculate the lowest carbon location for their meeting, including air, car, and rail travel options. Detailed pricing data per city also allows users to decide where to meet based on both CO² emissions and price.
Black Box Verdict: hubli Green easily enables businesses to put sustainability at the centre of their meetings, events and groups strategy.
Trees4Travel
Trees4Travel is an award-winning environmental ‘Tech For Good’ company providing carbon management technology to calculate and reduce emissions, through direct integrations into booking systems, API connectivity or simple file uploads. It calculates the impact of journeys, translates trips into trees, grows trees to restore forests, biodiversity and support indigenous communities, then reduces emissions today by connecting every tree to a UN CER renewable energy carbon credit. This year it launched Trees4Events, allowing any meeting to be a climate positive event from conception to compensation, ensuring events are not simply compensated but better planned from the outset to support the planet.
Black Box Verdict: This business is constantly evolving and we can’t wait to see what’s coming next from founders Nico and Elkie Nicholas.
CTM Climate+
CTM Climate+ sustainable travel programme consists of an ecosystem of services and technology solutions to help clients improve the sustainability of their travel programme by making more informed travel decisions. CTM’s proprietary online booking tool, Lightning, empowers the user to make more sustainable travel decisions by displaying carbon emissions for air, hotel, and car. It can filter and preference car results for EV and hybrid vehicles and sort flights and hotels by lowest emissions. The programme enables carbon offsetting at the final step of booking or end of the month, via CTM Climate+ or a client’s own offsetting solution.
Black Box Verdict: The investment made by this business to bring all important emissions data to the point of sale is admirable.
Travel Planet
Travel Planet offers an all-inclusive style TMC solution. This French-owned business is also carbon neutral and ISO14001 certified. Its proprietary technology platform ‘Click & Control’ is a modular marketplace, with limitless integration capabilities to maximise the ever-evolving travel distribution eco system. Travel Planet has market leading NDC capabilities and presents emissions data at point of sale, enabling the traveller to select more sustainable choices. Clients are offered 24/7 offline cover, traveller tracking, approval process, SSO and a full data suite at no additional cost, while offset for all clients’ CO² emissions for air, rail, hotel, and car rental are included.
Black Box Verdict: Displays emissions data clearly in the ‘Click & Control’ booking platform and offers all-inclusive offsetting as standard. Simple!
Greengage
Aimed at the hotel, aparthotel and event venue sectors, Greengage’s ECOsmart accreditation provides a quality stamp of approval, giving suppliers a competitive edge while helping companies make sustainable decisions when booking. A new addition, EVENTsmart, provides a carbon calculator for responsible meetings and events of all sizes, looking at travel, accommodation, the meeting space, catering, electricity, gas, water, event materials and waste.
Black Box Verdict: The new event product meets a growing demand from organisers, hotels and meeting venues for a new approach to responsible event planning. A great addition.
CHOOOSE
CHOOOSE is a climate tech platform that provides tools for integrating climate action into any customer experience through automated emissions calculations, dynamic sustainability scores, a vetted marketplace of carbon removals and offsets and climate programme reporting. Following a successful series B funding, it is expanding its portfolio of climate solutions from Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), carbon removals and verified offsets. It is hoping to create greater awareness of the environmental benefits of SAF and demonstrate demand for the fuel to scale its adoption across the global aviation industry.
Black Box Verdict: On a worthy mission to close the gap between climate intention and climate action and also promote the demand for SAF.
COCO+
COCO+ is a newly-certified B Corp that is bringing a business travel solution to market combining a slick user experience for travellers with an ethical commercial engine that allows businesses to tackle their travel emissions without any additional cost. It removes emissions from the full trip verifiably through third-party validated CO² removal projects. It has partnered with Climate Care for offsetting with GOLD standard certification and also offers a carbon negative Fuel Card solution, the first of its kind.
Black Box Verdict: We love how this start-up TMC truly embraces the focus on entire social and environmental impact.
Thrust Carbon
Thrust Carbon tools are designed to be effortless to deploy across your organisation, their mantra… Effortlessly Green. The products are simple to implement and the API solutions are built for ease of integration. Thrust Calculator uses hundreds of different data points to provide robust and defensible reporting. Thrust Engage is a suite of behavioural change tools that create and measure carbon budgets. Thrust Offset provides an independent platform to connect to any carbon offset scheme and the recently-launched Thrust Events is a solution for the M&E space. The team are now regularly featured for their travel sustainability expertise by the BBC, New York Times, CNN and more.
Black Box Verdict: We admire the effortless approach, truly delivered in the ease of integration and the simplicity of the ever-expanding product suite.
Movers & Shakers were selected with the help of Paula Cullen,
Associate for Growth & Sustainability, Black Box Partnerships
