Road Scholar’s Commitment to Sustainability — What’s New for 2025
As 2025 approaches, we’re excited to share our ongoing efforts to make Road Scholar programs more sustainable. Together, we can reduce our environmental impact and create a positive legacy for future travelers.
Bring Your Reusable Bottle
When you join a Road Scholar program, please bring a reusable water bottle. We're working to provide refill stations on all programs — even in areas where accessing safe drinking water is a challenge. Our goal is to eliminate single-use plastics, including water bottles, cutlery and straws. Additionally, we’re partnering with food providers to avoid using Styrofoam containers, which can take 500 years to decompose. Small changes, like carrying a reusable bottle, can help us make a big difference!
Auditing For Sustainability
In 2025, we’ll audit our vendors — from hotels and coaches to meal providers — to learn more about their sustainability practices. This audit will help us identify opportunities to:
- Reduce single-use plastics.
- Minimize food waste.
- Understand and lower the carbon emissions from our programs.
By gathering this data, we aim to set measurable goals, reduce our environmental footprint and share our progress openly to inspire change.
Lessons From a Climate Action Summit
This year, several members of our team attended a climate action summit in Norway, where we explored groundbreaking innovations in carbon reduction. (One fascinating example is enhanced rock weathering, a process that spreads finely ground silicate rock on land. This triggers a chemical reaction with air and water, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while reducing ocean acidification when the minerals eventually reach the sea.)
While the summit itself was far from home, the host offset participants' travel by investing in carbon removal credits. Inspired by what we learned, we’re eager to explore similar opportunities to support carbon removal technologies.
Thank You For Your Support
Sustainability is a journey, and we’re grateful to have you with us. Your efforts — like bringing a reusable water bottle — help us build a more sustainable future for travel. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to learn, grow, and lead by example in 2025 and beyond!
If you want to share feedback about sustainability on Road Scholar programs that you attend, please reach us at sustainability@roadscholar.org.