Our Sustainability Spotlight series is aimed at broadening the conversation surrounding sustainable tourism for visitors and businesses by sharing the stories of our Adventure Green Alaska certified businesses. To learn more about Adventure Green Alaska certification please visit our about page.

Alaska Alpine Adventures was founded with a passion for exploring Alaska’s wildest and most remote landscapes while preserving them for future generations. For over 25 years, they have specialized in small-group, guided wilderness expeditions, taking guests deep into national parks like Lake Clark, Katmai, and Gates of the Arctic. Their mission is to provide transformational experiences that connect people with nature, foster personal growth, create lasting memories – all while upholding the principles of sustainable tourism. 

Sustainability has been at the heart of their operations since day one. From the beginning, they have prioritized Leave No Trace principles, low-impact camping techniques, and responsible wildlife viewing. Over the years, they have expanded their efforts to include carbon footprint reduction, waste minimization, and supporting local communities through ethical partnerships and sourcing. As a proud 1% for the Planet member, Alaska Alpine Adventures has donated over $125,000 to conservation non-profits, reinforcing their commitment to protecting Alaska’s pristine wilderness.

For businesses considering implementing sustainable practices, Alaska Alpine Adventures recommends starting with small, meaningful changes and build from there. Sustainability isn’t about perfection, it’s about process and progress. Begin by adopting Leave No Trace principles, reducing single-use plastics, and sourcing locally whenever possible. Educate both staff and guests on responsible tourism, and be transparent about your efforts. Collaboration is key—partner with like-minded organizations, seek certifications like AGA, and continuously look for ways to improve. Most importantly, integrate sustainability into your company culture so it becomes a natural part of your day to day operations. 

Alaska Alpine Adventures aligns most closely with Local Economies and Communities and The Environment pillars of the Adventure Green Alaska Program. To support the local economies and communities in which they operate, they hire local guides when possible, work with local Alaskan businesses, and promote cultural and community exchange through authentic experiences. To protect the natural environment, they operate with strict Leave No Trace ethics, reduce waste, and advocate for conservation efforts that protect Alaska’s delicate ecosystems. Through 1% for the Planet, Alaska Alpine Adventures actively funds organizations working to safeguard these wild spaces.

For Alaska Alpine Adventures, becoming a certified Adventure Green Alaska business has strengthened their reputation as a leader in sustainable adventure travel in Alaska. It reassures their guests that their experience is both environmentally responsible and socially conscious—aligning perfectly with their values. The program has also connected them with a network of like-minded businesses, providing opportunities for collaboration and growth. Ultimately, AGA certification, alongside their 1% for the Planet membership and ongoing conservation donations, helps them inspire trust, attract like-minded travelers, and continue making a positive impact on Alaska’s wild places.

To learn more about Alaska Alpine Adventures, visit their Green Business profile and their website.

Our Sustainability Spotlight series is aimed at broadening the conversation surrounding sustainable tourism for visitors and businesses by sharing the stories of our Adventure Green Alaska certified businesses. To learn more about Adventure Green Alaska certification please visit our about page.

Above and Beyond Alaska is a boutique guiding company that has been operating since 2002. Their priorities are providing outstanding customer service, maintaining the highest safety standards, and serving as responsible stewards of the environment. They specialize in small-group, high-quality wilderness adventures that feature the best of Southeast Alaska – glaciers, bears, and whales. Their tours are sought after by those passionate about the environment and sustainability and want to explore off the beaten path adventures. They combine human powered adventures with boat or float plane transport to several of their tour destinations. 

Since opening their doors in 2002, ABAK has been deeply committed to sustainability by focusing on reducing, reusing, and recycling. They’ve implemented measures such as minimizing paper use, providing reusable aluminum water bottles to reduce single-use plastics, and using reusable snack bags to cut down on waste. Additionally, they actively recycle cardboard, paper, plastic, glass, and aluminum. In 2015, they took another step toward energy efficiency by installing heat pumps to heat their warehouse and office.

ABAK recommends that businesses looking to strengthen their sustainability efforts make sustainability a key value proposition. Create clear sustainability policies, gather input from your team, and promote them on your website and social media platforms. Maintain consistent follow-through to demonstrate your commitment.

In 2022, ABAK partnered with the Alaska Carbon Reduction Fund (ACRF) to help meet their sustainability goals and became the first tourism company to participate and raise funds for heat pumps to be installed in low-income family homes. Over the span of 2022-2024, ABAK successfully raised over $22,000 to support this endeavor, contributing to the Alaska Carbon Reduction Fund’s mission. The Alaska Carbon Reduction Fund replaces oil-burning heating systems with efficient, emissions-free air source heat pumps. This initiative offers heating assistance to lower-income families in Juneau, helping reduce housing costs by significantly cutting annual heating bills. By using heat pumps, the reliance on diesel fuel is eliminated, preventing the release of tons of carbon dioxide each year.

Environmental sustainability is deeply aligned with ABAK’s business values. They strictly adhere to Leave No Trace principles on all of their trips, ensuring they pack in and pack out everything. Their mission is to explore, educate, and promote environmental conservation in their backyard. ABAK believes that exploration, paired with education, inspires conservation, and this philosophy is at the heart of everything they do.

To learn more about Above and Beyond Alaska, visit their Green Business profile and their website.

Our Sustainability Spotlight series is aimed at broadening the conversation surrounding sustainable tourism for visitors and businesses by sharing the stories of our Adventure Green Alaska certified businesses. To learn more about Adventure Green Alaska certification please visit our about page.

Wrangell Mountain Air was founded by Kelly and Natalie Bay in 1992 as a small but ambitious air taxi service in McCarthy, Alaska—one of the most remote towns in the country, nestled deep inside Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. This is no ordinary park; it’s the largest in the United States, dwarfing Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the entire country of Switzerland combined! From the beginning, their mission has been simple: connect people to this vast and wild landscape in a way that’s safe, responsible, and awe-inspiring.

Their services range from daily flights between Chitina and McCarthy, helping visitors skip the notorious McCarthy Road, to private charters, backcountry drop-offs, and flightseeing tours over some of the tallest peaks and largest glaciers in North America. In fact Wrangell-St. Elias NP has over 3,100 glaciers, making it the park with the most glaciers in Alaska as well! Over the years, their fleet has grown to include a mix of aircraft suited for both front-country and deep wilderness operations, including Cessna 172, 185, and 206s, a Piper Super Cub, and a DeHavilland Beaver. The original owners have since passed the torch to a new generation of pilots, but they’re still here, still flying, and still very much a part of the Wrangell Mountain Air community.

Sustainability isn’t an afterthought for Wrangell Mountain Air. It’s baked into the reality of operating in McCarthy. This has always been an off-the-grid community, which means every watt of electricity they use, they have to generate themselves. Solar panels power much of their operation, but on cloudy days, they’re hyper-aware of how much energy they are consuming, so as not to rely heavily on generators. Water is another limited resource; they pump and haul it from Clear Creek, which makes conservation a daily habit rather than an abstract goal. Waste management is another challenge. They’re responsible for hauling all of their organization’s waste on an eight-hour drive back to Anchorage for proper disposal. That makes waste reduction a necessity. They prioritize composting, recycling, and eliminating excess wherever possible. Staff not only work there, but most live on-site, so Wrangell Mountain Air organizes bulk grocery runs in combination with their trash hauls to reduce long drives to Anchorage to just once a month. Living communally, they practice sharing resources whenever they can to keep waste minimal. Beyond infrastructure, sustainability informs how they operate in the park itself. They work to minimize environmental impact in their flightseeing and backcountry services, ensuring that visitors experience the grandeur of Wrangell-St. Elias without leaving a lasting footprint.

For businesses considering implementing sustainable practices, Wrangell Mountain Air recommends starting with the basics. The first being “reduce, reuse, recycle,” but it isn’t just a catchy phrase, it’s an order of operations. Start with reduction. Where can you use less? Less energy, less waste, fewer single-use materials? Small changes including switching to LED lighting, cutting unnecessary packaging, going paperless, encouraging carpooling add up fast. Only once you’ve minimized waste should you focus on reuse: repurposing materials, finding second (or third) lives for equipment, and encouraging sustainable habits within your team. Recycling is last on the list for a reason; it’s important, but it’s a last resort, not the first step. Sustainability doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Start small, track your progress, and always ask how you can do more and build from there.

A few years ago, one of their pilots, Bill McKinney, posed a challenge: Could they make their flight operations carbon-neutral? It was an ambitious idea, and they started small. First, they crunched the numbers by calculating their carbon emissions per flight hour. The result? Offsetting their flights would cost between $1.75 and $2.75 per hour. Not a huge sum, but a meaningful one.

They began with a tip jar in the office, labeled as a kind of “thank-you to the Earth” fund. Bill, ever dedicated, often donated much of his own tips. Wrangell Mountain Air matched contributions up to $1,500. Then they expanded by offering credit card donations, adding offset contributions to invoices, and this year partnering with travel agents to integrate carbon offsets directly into bookings.

The results have exceeded their expectations. In previous summers, they hustled to meet their fundraising goals. Now, with these new partnerships, they’ve already surpassed their target—and summer is still months away. Even as the average individual donation shrinks, the number of people participating is growing, which is exactly the kind of broad-based engagement they hoped to inspire. Wrangell Mountain Air hopes that getting more people involved will lead to more discussions about what else one can do to make their vacation to Alaska more sustainable. 

The natural environment defines Wrangell Mountain Air. Their entire business exists because of the natural beauty of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, and they take that responsibility seriously. They know that flying burns fossil fuels, and they don’t pretend otherwise. They chose to do something about that. Through their carbon offset program, they’ve kept their air operations carbon-neutral. Every flight they operate is an opportunity to educate passengers, not just about the grandeur of the park, but about the very real changes happening here, from retreating glaciers to shifting ecosystems.

To ensure they’re sharing accurate information, their pilots receive annual training from National Park geologists. And because Wrangell-St. Elias doesn’t require backcountry users to attend ranger-led briefings, they step up by educating their clients on Leave No Trace principles and implementing their own internal system to prevent overuse of sensitive areas. They’re not just flying over the park; they’re working to protect it.

Sustainable tourism isn’t just about minimizing harm; it’s about actively doing good by supporting local economies, educating visitors, and making sure that the landscapes we cherish remain intact for future generations. Adventure Green Alaska is proud to continue to support a business that prioritizes sustainability from a holistic point of view.

To learn more about Wrangell Mountain Air, visit their Green Business profile and their website.

Our Sustainability Spotlight series is aimed at broadening the conversation surrounding sustainable tourism for visitors and businesses by sharing the stories of our Adventure Green Alaska certified businesses. To learn more about Adventure Green Alaska certification please visit our about page.

Seward Ocean Excursions was founded in 2016 by a local Seward family, Bixler and Krystin McClure. Bixler has strong family ties to Seward spanning multiple generations, and Krystin has roots in Fairbanks, Alaska. Bixler has an M.A. degree in Environmental Geography from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His thesis was on the environmental and social impacts of SCUBA diving in several locations around Hawaii, and he worked as a researcher for several sustainable tourism groups through the University. Krystin has an M.S. in Ocean and Resources Engineering from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, which focused on the sustainable use of the ocean’s resources. Their education and work experience fostered an interest in sustainable tourism.

Bixler and Krystin dreamed for years about sharing their beautiful neck of the woods (and ocean) with visitors, and in 2016 they decided to give it a go and started Seward Ocean Excursions. In 2016, Seward Ocean Excursions was just Bixler, Krystin, and one boat. Over the course of several years, they expanded to three boats and a handful of other captains. Seward Ocean Excursions offers year-round small group (a maximum of 6 guests per boat) wildlife and sightseeing tours in Seward, Alaska.

Seward Ocean Excursions has been implementing sustainable practices since the very beginning, even before purchasing their first boat. They wanted to share the small group experience on a very fuel-efficient boat. They conducted a lot of research, ran a lot of Excel spreadsheets, looked at a lot of boats, and talked to many boat builders before finally deciding on the boat that met their criteria. Since starting operations in 2016, all of their other practices have been in place (i.e. recycling, being open year-round, providing donations, and conducting beach cleanups).

To businesses looking to begin their sustainable journey, Seward Ocean Excursions recommends brainstorming ideas on how to lessen any impacts from your operations. It is important to remember that sustainability does not just involve the natural environment, but to be mindful of any impacts on the social, cultural, and economic environments the business operates in.

Above all else, Seward Ocean Excursions is most proud of their positive impact on the community. From running free trips for local families, to involving the community in beach cleanups, to donating to countless local causes, Seward Ocean Excursions is a positive and impactful member of the local community. While all of their other practices are important as well, they believe helping the community that they live and operate in has a great effect, especially being located in a small town.

Seward Ocean Excursions’ participation in the Adventure Green Alaska program has helped them codify and grow their sustainable practices while being highlighted with other peers in the sustainable tourism sphere in Alaska.

To learn more about Seward Ocean Excursions, visit their Green Business profile and their website.

Our Sustainability Spotlight series is aimed at broadening the conversation surrounding sustainable tourism for visitors and businesses by sharing the stories of our Adventure Green Alaska certified businesses. To learn more about Adventure Green Alaska certification please visit our about page.

In 1987 company founder Thom Ely moved to Haines full-time and bought an existing bike shop and Sockeye Cycle was born. In 1988 the first tours were offered in Haines, then expanded to the neighboring Northern Lynn Canal community of Skagway in 1992. Since that time, Sockeye Cycle has continued to develop daily tour and bike rental operations out of two retail bike shops in Haines and Skagway along with extended tours around the region. In 2019, the business was sold to long time General Manager Dustin Craney who continues Sockeye Cycle’s mission to share the joy of experiencing nature on a bike. Today, they are the oldest operating full-service bicycle business in Alaska. They take pride in the high quality sales, service, rentals and tours that they provide in the communities of Haines and Skagway, and throughout the North. Their staff is always welcoming and ready to help visitors with all of their cycling needs.

Sockeye Cycle considers cycling itself to be a sustainable practice. They’ve been cycling-focused since day one and actively encourage travelers to see new places via bicycle. Their business helps locals get bikes on the road by offering service and bicycle sales. They value their business operations that work to provide quality products to visitors and locals alike.

To tourism businesses considering implementing sustainable practices, Sockeye Cycle recommends investing where your values lie. If your business values the environment, invest in lower-impact infrastructure and products from the very beginning. They emphasize the need of sustainable practices as much of tourism in Alaska is rooted in nature, and tourism businesses must protect the product that they are selling.

Sockeye Cycle had a unique approach to the task of reducing single-use plastic waste from water bottles handed out during tours. Their tours are active and require them to provide water for all of their guests. They offer a compostable water bottle to each guest on tour that features a formline design of a Sockeye salmon drawn by a local Tlingit Alaska Native. Water bottles are free to use, but if guests would like to keep them as a souvenir, they sell the bottles for a $3 donation. Donations are collected throughout the season and proceeds benefit the Tlingit Native Language revitalization efforts in local areas as well as various conservation efforts in Southeast Alaska. Sockeye Cycle matches all guest donations and is able to donate about $20,000 each year to these initiatives.

Sockeye Cycle focuses on environmental preservation as the core of their sustainable values. They believe that more people riding bikes both leisurely and as a form of transportation has tangible benefits to the environment. They also align with the Alaska Culture and History pillar of the Adventure Green Alaska program, by providing a rigorous training program to their guides covering the Klondike Gold Rush, which is near and dear to Skagway, as well as local Alaska Native Tlingit history and culture. 

Through their actions and advice, Sockeye Cycle Co. shows that investing in your values from the very beginning can create a stronger business, healthier communities, and a more sustainable tourism industry.

To learn more about Sockeye Cycle Co., visit their Green Business profile and their website.