Niels Korthals Altes (SEA 89–91) is currently a Director at Climate Neutral Group. Before the merger of Climate Neutral Group and GreenSeats, Niels was Chief Executive Officer and founder of GreenSeats, a company that compensates for the cost of harmful emissions caused by airline flights.

 

Prior to this, Neils was a Marketing Manager of SlimFast at Unilever, and a Brand Manager of Conimex at Unilever. Neils attended Erasmus University in Rotterdam.

 

Niels believes that his UWC experiences have helped him to understand the importance of co-operative work. “This insight has helped me to make a success of Green Seats: I learned that we all come from different countries but we face the same problems”. Niels’ interest in this area came as a result of regular holidays abroad, parents who worked away, and his working life with Unilever. While studying at UWC Niels’ parents lived in Kuala Lumpur and he would fly home for holidays. “The deforestation of Malaysia was very visible from the air and that definitely got me thinking about these issues early on.” Reading an article about ‘COOL Flying’ sparked an interest for Niels. This company compensates for the greenhouse gas emissions of a flight by planting and protecting forests.

 

GreenSeat funds the planting and protection of forests to compensate for the carbon dioxide and other damaging emissions caused by air travel. It is supported by more than 100 travel organisations in various countries. GreenSeat customers include the Dutch Parliament, various Ministries, Cordaid and TNT Group, as well as thousands of individuals who compensate their flights. Climate Neutral Group offers services to offset carbon emissions caused by all sorts of activities. The merge places the company in a better position to offer a full range of carbon offset services to its customers.

 

A Green Seat usually costs between 2% and 5% more than a standard ticket. “At the moment people only pay for the economic cost of flying and not the environmental cost,” says Niels. “Our global society has to move towards a new economic model whereby the cost of the environment is incorporated into the price of products and services”. The Company’s mission is to get everybody on a green seat. Niels believes that integration and alliances with travel companies are the future, “it needs to be made easy for people”.
         
“A single seat on a Europe-Asia return flight produces the same volume of greenhouse gas (4 tons of CO2) as the average European driver does in a whole year.” Niels believes that greater awareness will help people to see the negative aspects of their consumption and will, in time, change behaviour. 
         
Neils’ believes that Climate change is a problem that affects us all, but that we need to combine our efforts on a global scale to make a difference. At UWC you learn to work together with people from different countries and that is essential to solve this type of problem,” he says. I started becoming involved once I realised that you can choose to make the world a little better every time you open your wallet. With every Euro, Dollar or Yen you spend you support the way business is being done.”