Lindblad Eliminates Single-Use Plastic Fleetwide
Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic have successfully completed a comprehensive single-use plastics elimination program across their fleet.
Lindblad’s ships are now 100% free of all single-use plastic bottles, cups, straws and stirrers. The effort supports National Geographic’s Planet or Plastic? campaign, a multi-year initiative aimed at raising awareness about the global plastic crisis and reducing the amount of plastic in the world’s oceans.
Lindblad Expeditions began working towards the elimination of avoidable plastic waste in 2007 when they banned single-use plastic water bottles. Instead, guests receive individual reusable stainless-steel bottles that may be refilled at filtered-water stations located around the vessels.
Lindblad’s commitment continues as they work with suppliers and seek partners to eliminate and reduce plastic packaging for the items they supply. The next phase in executing a broader reduction in its plastic packaging requires an industry-wide mandate to its suppliers to explore sustainable alternatives. Lindblad has built a global travel company with conservation and environmental stewardship as core business tenets.
The company’s commitment to the places they explore includes (since 1997) more than $15 million to support stewardship efforts through the Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic Fund, which awards approximately $1.5 million in grants per year. In 2017, that funding supported initiatives in Alaska, Baja, Galapagos, the Peruvian Amazon, Cambodia, Antarctica, the Pacific Northwest, Central America and more through the Pristine Seas project, National Geographic’s largest initiative dedicated to environmental preservation. Initiatives included killer-whale research in Antarctica, artisan training in the Peruvian Amazon and Galapagos, and conservation-based research projects to protect humpback whales in Southeast Alaska.
