PicoNext has recently announced a collaboration with Tomorrow’s Air, the flagship climate initiative of the Adventure Travel Trade Association. Tomorrow’s Air focuses on educating, inspiring, and mobilizing individuals to support carbon removal technologies and sustainable aviation fuel in the travel industry.

The initiative is part of a larger effort to promote sustainable travel practices and innovative climate solutions.

Every payment received by Tomorrow’s Air supports climate conscious travel education. It also funds the scale up of carbon emission reductions and carbon removal innovations.

PicoNext is an end-to-end platform for experienced brands to engage their customers using public ledgers. With integrated Digital Product Passport, sustainability transparency, and loyalty capabilities, PicoNext enables companies to use blockchains in promoting products/services.

What are Digital Product Passports?

As part of their collaboration, PicoNext is powering Tomorrow’s Air’s new Digital Product Passports designed for carbon removal purchases. These passports offer a unique way for travelers to track the progress and impact of associated carbon removal orders. 

When individuals embark on a journey with one of Tomorrow’s Air’s partner travel businesses, the Digital Product Passport allows them to gain insights into how carbon dioxide emissions associated with their travel are being effectively removed from the atmosphere.

The Digital Product Passport includes a detailed representation of carbon removal purchases specific to a particular travel business. It offers travelers a deeper understanding of how industry partners are contributing to the scaling up of essential technologies for cleaning up excess CO2. 

The carbon removal information stored in Tomorrow’s Air Digital Product Passports is cryptographically secure, ensuring the integrity of the data. This adds an extra layer of transparency and trust to the process, as the information can’t be changed or tampered with once it’s written to the blockchain.

Moreover, updates on the status of climate initiatives within the Digital Product Passport remain accessible indefinitely across distributed ledgers. As such, it provides travelers and Tomorrow’s Air’s travel business customers with insights into the progress of carbon removal actions. 

The intuitive web-based viewer provided by PicoNext enables easy access to view the status of these public-ledger carbon removal events. 

The Passport to Transparency in Carbon Removals

Tomorrow’s Air is advancing its approach to carbon capture reporting by transitioning from PDF-based certificates to PicoNext’s Digital Product Passports. This evolution aims to provide enhanced transparency to a broader audience of stakeholders using sustainable and energy-efficient public ledgers. 

Unlike traditional PDF certificates, Digital Product Passports leverage blockchain technology to offer an easy-to-access method for gaining deeper insights into a company’s sustainability initiatives.

Underlining this aspect, Christina Beckmann, creator of Tomorrow’s Air remarked that:

“Tomorrow’s Air adds value by collaborating with the most trusted, reputable carbon removal suppliers – and by elevating transparency using Digital Product Passports we give our customers unmatched visibility into their carbon removal orders.” 

By using Digital Product Passports, Tomorrow’s Air can engage customers with a more interactive and transparent representation of carbon removals. This approach not only substantiates a company’s commitment to sustainability but also fosters greater trust among stakeholders. 

More notably, it serves as a proactive measure against greenwashing, addressing consumer concerns about the authenticity of sustainability claims.

Several high-profile cases have highlighted the negative consequences of greenwashing, leading to legal actions and reputational damage. Delta Air Lines, Evian Natural Spring Water, Nivea, TotalEnergies, KLM, and FIFA have all faced legal challenges related to their environmental claims.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that environmental groups unanimously agree in supporting environmental and social data in a Digital Product Passport. As shown in the chart below, 92% of environmental organizations/NGOs prefer to see environmental data in the passport. 

PicoNext’s technology allows organizations to showcase their commitment to sustainability on a public ledger, providing a verifiable record of progress toward environmental goals. By leveraging this technology, companies demonstrate that their marketing claims align with genuine environmental impact, thus safeguarding their claims’ integrity.

This innovative approach is applicable across various industries, such as manufacturing, fashion, textiles, batteries, and electronics. 

Furthermore, adopting Digital Product Passports assists companies in complying with European Union regulations that emphasize product-level transparency. The passports provide a transparent and substantiated record of sustainability data throughout a product’s lifecycle.

In conclusion, the collaboration between PicoNext and Tomorrow’s Air signifies a significant stride toward transparency and accountability in carbon removal efforts. The introduction of Digital Product Passports not only empowers travelers to track their carbon footprint but also sets a new standard for sustainability reporting in the travel industry.