Don’t mark your own homework

Earlier we mentioned the Austrian Airlines Venice Biennale campaign, which was successfully challenged in front of the country’s advertising regulator. One problem is that it talked about ‘flying CO2 neutral, without anyone backing up the claims.

Having a credible third party on board is now crucial when it comes to verifying and assessing sustainability initiatives.

One of the best known, and one that airlines are starting to get on board with, is Science Based Targets.

Those targets are administered by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). Companies submit their carbon reduction goals, and a team of experts then provides them with independent assessment and validation..

The partner organisations in SBTi are CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project), the UN Global Compact, WRI (World Resources Institute) and WWF (World Wildlife Fund). As a result, it’s credible and heavyweight.

Airlines that now adhere to science based targets include American Airlines, easyJet, Finnair, Air New Zealand and Air France-KLM. easyJet for example published a very ambitious net zero programme , relying a lot on the development of new hydrogen aircraft as well as carbon removals technology.

That roadmap has clear SBTi targets of a reduction in emissions of 35% by 2035.

There are other organisations as well who can assess and measure sustainability and net zero progress.

For example, during the recent APEX/ IFSA EXPO, amenity kit company FORMIA talked about how it was working with Dutch company REBEL .

According to FORMIA’s chief customer experience officer Marisa Pitsch, the collaboration with REBEL allows FORMIA to “turn all our concepts and dreams into data.” This is important as “otherwise it can be marketing hype and greenwashing. And we recognise how important that is to the airlines as well, that when they tell the story they can also back that up with data and information.” source: easyJet

Having a third party work with you is not foolproof, KLM works with SBTi, but is still being taken to court, but it does provide an important layer of validation and credibility. It makes greenwashing claims much harder to stick if you have someone backing up what you are doing.