How to Earn Qantas Green Tier After the Devaluation

Qantas Frequent Flyer has updated the activities that members can complete to achieve Green Tier, making it significantly harder for most people to earn. One of the reward options for people who’ve earned Green Tier has also been removed.

Launched in 2022, Green Tier is a Qantas initiative to reward frequent flyers for making sustainable choices, both when flying and at home.

Qantas Green Tier sits alongside the traditional Qantas status tiers, rather than replacing them. It’s also completely separate to Points Club membership, which you can get by earning a minimum amount of Qantas Points each year.

To become a Green Tier member, you would need to complete at least five activities such as offsetting carbon emissions, completing a quiz or buying wine from an eco vineyard.

Many Australian Frequent Flyer members go for Green Tier as a way to relatively easily earn an extra 50 status credits each year. Those bonus status credits count towards Qantas Silver, Gold, Platinum or Platinum One status.

Rewards for Qantas Green tier members

After achieving Green Tier, Qantas Frequent Flyer members can choose from one of two rewards:

• 50 bonus Qantas status credits, or
• 10,000 bonus Qantas Points.

Qantas previously gave a third reward option, which was for the airline to purchase 3 tonnes of carbon offsets on your behalf (worth approximately $60). Qantas removed that option last month – probably because barely anybody chose it.

You can achieve Green tier membership on an annual basis. You’ll receive a new choice of reward during each Qantas Frequent Flyer membership year in which you complete at least five of the six required activities.

After completing the required actions, you’ll be able to select your preferred reward on the Qantas website.

In addition, Qantas Green Tier members can get a unique digital Qantas Frequent Flyer membership card.

Qantas also promises invitations to sustainability events and experiences, such as the inaugural Green Tier dinner that took place in October 2022 in Sydney.

That said, that dinner was only open to the first 50 members to respond to the email invitation and reached capacity within about five minutes. And it’s been quite a while since Qantas hosted its last Green Tier event. So, realistically, most Green Tier members won’t make it to any events.

With this in mind, the main reason to aim for Green Tier is to get the bonus 50 status credits or 10,000 Qantas Points. Anything extra is a bonus!

How to earn Qantas Green Tier membership

To earn Qantas’ Green Tier, you would need to complete actions in five out of the six categories below during your Qantas Frequent Flyer membership year:

1. Flying

You can complete this goal by adding a carbon offset to a flight booked on Qantas.com. Contributions to the Voluntary Carbon program may only cost a few dollars for domestic flights. Unfortunately, since 1 July 2024, Qantas no longer matches these contributions.

Qantas Frequent Flyers can also earn 10 Qantas Points per dollar on carbon offset purchases. In 2021, the airline said that 11% of customers chose to offset their carbon emissions.

In the future, you’ll also be able to complete this objective by contributing to sustainable aviation fuel.

2. Travelling

To meet this requirement, you would need to book a stay of at least one night at an eco-accredited hotel in Australia through Qantas Hotels.

There are 37 eligible hotels, all in Australia. You can find a list of eco-accredited hotels on the Qantas website.

All Qantas Frequent Flyer members can earn 3 Qantas Points per dollar for booking any hotel through Qantas Hotels. After achieving Green Tier, you’ll also earn an additional 150 Qantas Points per night when booking an eligible eco-accredited hotel.

There are a few eligible hotels with rooms available for under $200 per night, but most are not particularly cheap. Therefore, this category would likely cost the most money to achieve compared to the other five Green tier earning categories. However, you can redeem Qantas Hotels vouchers towards a booking, including the vouchers given to Points Club members.

3. Lifestyle

There are three ways to achieve this category:

1. Purchase solar panels or other products from Solargain,
2. Add GreenPower to a Qantas Red Saver plan with Red Energy, or
3. Link a ReycleSmart account to your Qantas account and complete 3 pickups.

Until last month, you could complete this category by purchasing a home and car offset package on the Qantas Marketplace website. This would cost as little as $50 for residents of Tasmania or South Australia without a car. Unfortunately, this is no longer an option.

If using RecycleSmart to get a leaf in this category, it would cost around $45 for a three-month subscription which entitles you to three pick-ups. You would then need to allow at least six weeks after the third pick-up before you receive your Green Tier leaf for this category.

4. Shopping

You can achieve this Green Tier leaf by purchasing a designated “sustainable wine” from Qantas Wine.

Qantas works with Sustainable Winegrowing Australia to identify wine producers who adopt sustainable practices in six categories: land and soil, waste, energy, water, biodiversity, people and business. Existing Green Tier members will also earn 250 bonus points with any sustainable wine purchase.

Qantas Wine does not deliver to most parts of the Northern Territory.

In the past, you could also earn this leaf by offsetting any delivery from Qantas Wine or Qantas Marketplace for $1. Unfortunately, this is no longer an option.

5. Learning

You can complete this category by taking a free sustainability quiz within the Qantas Wellbeing App. By doing this, you’ll also earn 100 Qantas Points.

The Qantas Wellbeing App is available to download from the Apple App Store or Google Play store within Australia.

Alternatively, you can earn 100 Qantas Points and get a Green Tier leaf by completing four weekly surveys in the Saveful app. This free app is designed to help Australians save on groceries and reduce food wastage.

6. Give back

Finally, you can complete the “Give back” criteria by donating Qantas points through Qantas Marketplace to a project or charity that is focused on sustainability. The minimum donation amount is 3,200 points, which is equivalent to a $25 donation. There is no longer an option to complete this step by donating money.

There are currently four eligible organisations that you can donate to:

• Great Barrier Reef Foundation
• Kimberley Land Council
• OzHarvest
• UNICEF

Check your progress

You can check your progress on the Qantas website, by logging in and going to the new, dedicated Qantas Green Tier page.

There is normally a delay of 1-2 days between completing the activity and your Green Tier progress appearing on your Qantas Frequent Flyer account.

The easiest pathway to Green Tier

If you just want to get the 10,000 Qantas points or 50 status credits as cheaply as possible, this is the easiest way to reach Green Tier:

Category	Action to complete
Flying	Offset the carbon emissions on a Qantas flight
Give back	Donate 3,200 Qantas points to an eligible charity
Lifestyle	Create a RecycleSmart account and order 3 pick-ups
Shopping	Purchase a sustainable wine from Qantas Wine
Learning	Complete the sustainability knowledge quiz in the free Qantas Wellbeing app

Is it worth going for Qantas Green Tier?

Until recently, the answer for most people was “yes”. Green Tier used to be a relatively easy way to earn either 10,000 bonus points or 50 status credits.

If you’ll be completing many of the actions anyway, like purchasing carbon offsets or powering your home with GreenPower from Red Energy, the rewards on offer are worthwhile.

10,000 Qantas Points is enough for a one-way Economy Class flight of up to 600 miles (e.g. Sydney-Melbourne), excluding taxes & carrier charges. Alternatively, if you go for the 50 status credits, this could make it easier for you to earn or renew Qantas Frequent Flyer status.

Unfortunately, earning Green Tier is now harder – and more expensive. You would need to spend quite a bit of your own money to complete activities like buying wine, staying at an eco-accredited hotel or paying for recycling pick-ups.

Many of the activities are good for the environment anyway, so there is a “social good” involved. But there’s no point spending money to achieve Green Tier if you don’t value the rewards on offer.

Thoughts from the AFF community

Here’s what a few Australian Frequent Flyer members have written on our forum about the recent changes to Qantas Green Tier:

Means I’ll stick with my earlier decision not to bother this year, as only 5 weeks to go. Will reassess next FF year.

Aeryn on the AFF forum

As someone who does not drink, the removal of climate positive delivery makes it basically infeasible, as the hotel tick was almost always unattainable.

exceladdict on the AFF forum

Oh this is not great! I needed to offset to get my 5th leaf before 31 July!

None of the lifestyle options are viable (Renting in an apartment on an embedded electricity network, and this new 3 month Recycle thing seems unworkable)

bussyboy on the AFF forum

I wonder whether Qantas are contemplating wrapping up Green tier. It certainly seems neglected.

MELso on the AFF forum

Some AFF members have also noted that the recent changes make it unviable to complete any activity some of the categories, depending on where you live in Australia:

Ugh. As a non metro based QFF I could at least achieve green tier fairly reasonably each year, but this change is making it impossible this year. RecycleSmart pretty much only available in Sydney, and some parts of Newcastle.

astrosly on the AFF forum

[The Lifestyle category options are] 3 items that are not available in the NT. So I’m stuck on the “eco hotels” option

Don’t think we can do wine here either so effectively only 4 options available in total. No way to get to 5

nancypants on the AFF forum

You can read lots more comments and tips, and join the discussion, on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: