In 2008, LRB Flagship, which owns the brands Pure Adventures, Discover France, and Cycling Classics is continuing its commitment to the environment and to conservation. We joined Sustainable Travel International (STI) in 2006 and starting purchasing the carbon offsets to make tours carbon neutral for all tours in 2007. We are continuing again in 2008. Some may ask, "What does this mean, exactly?"

We are pleased to say that because we buying offsets through STI, we have verifiable projects that are making measurable differences. Our program in 2008 is the purchase of Green-e Certified Green Tags; they are USA Renewable Energy projects. Specifically: Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) Green Tags are also known as renewable energy certificates (REC) which are market based commodities representing 1,000 kilowatt hours (1 Megawatt hour) of electicity generation from renewables such as solar, wind, hydro, and biomass. The tags meet strict criteria including Green-e certification. (www.green-e.org) The following projects are receiving support from the dollars we contribute when you purchase a tour:

White Creek Wind Project - 205 MW wind farm in Roosevelt, WA. USA

Condon Wind Project - 49.8 MW wind farm near Condon, OR. USA

Foote Creek Wind Project - multi-phase wind farm in Carbon County, WY. USA

A host of other wind projects located in the USA are also recipients; for a full list and details, please visit the STI website on this link.

What else does LRB Flagship do to minimize environmental impact?

1. we eliminated brochures in 2003; all of our tour listings and details are online, among these pages, and we make every effort to be available quickly by email and phone to answer questions so as to make brochures unnecessary for booking a trip.

2. travel documentation is sent electronically cutting down on huge amounts of paper and shipping.

3. tours are mostly self-guided which means that support vehicles are not in service most of the time.

4. in the host country, we do our best to work with suppliers and properties that also adhere to ecological, low impact ways of doing business. It certainly isn't always available, but where it is, we try to reward those businesses with your patronage.

5. the staff and owners do their part to live lightly and conserve. We are not eco-warriors, just concerned citizens of the planet doing what we can to rethink how we get things done. We believe that a little contribution by everyone will make a big impact and doing so doesn't require an unreasonable sacrifice.

We are putting money behind our convictions. Certainly, carbon contributions from a cycling and hiking tour are very small by comparison to other forms of travel. Nonetheless, we are pledging $9000US worth of offsets to make our trips carbon neutral, and we don't see this as negligible and something to be considered when comparing our tours to the competition. We hope you believe in the value of this and take pride in knowing your trip isn't making the planet worse!