Useful Tips
» Minimise your energy consumption.
» Promote and facilitate the reduction, reuse and recycling of materials.
» Question the water quality, including the efficient treatment of sewerage, which avoids discharge into marine and river environments.
» Reduce and manage your litter.
» Create your own adventure by getting out and about via public transport, bicycles and walking. These ‘environmentally friendly’ ways of exploring really help you get closer to the country you have come to visit.
» Respect the local culture and traditions. Please ensure your dress and behaviour is appropriate for the place you visit. If you’re unsure, you can talk to local people, ask your travel representative or at your accommodation.
» Giving to children encourages begging. A donation to a project, health centre or school is more constructive.
» Please don’t buy products from endangered plants or wild animals, including hardwoods, corals, shells, ivory, fur, feathers, skins, horn, teeth, reptiles and turtles.
» Please don’t have your photograph taken with any ‘wild’ animals (such as lion and tiger cubs, chimpanzees
, bears, snakes and exotic birds). These animals are taken from the wild when they are very young, often mistreated and disposed of when they get too large or difficult to handle.
» You can opt for carbon offsetting schemes.
» Work with local partners in long – term relationships ensuring local people benefit economically and socially from your visit.
» Ensure that guides and others involved are paid a fair wage.
» Build links with locally based tourism projects.
Our Holidays, Their Homes
Your holiday destination is a place where people live; people who may have different values and sensibilities to your own. Opening your mind to new cultures and traditions is part of the joy of a holiday. Learn a few words of the local language before you go – your stumbling attempts will be appreciated even if they cause hilarity.
Local people will welcome you more readily if you have thought carefully about how to behave and are wearing appropriate clothes.
And remember, not everybody likes having their picture taken. Don’t treat people as part of the landscape. Put yourself in their shoes and imagine how it might feel for them to be photographed. Ask first and respect their wishes.
Haggle with Humour
Try to keep your money in the local economy; eat in local restaurants, drink local beer or fruit juice rather than imported brands and pay a fair price when you’re buying souvenirs and handicrafts. Bargaining can be great fun, so haggle with humour – but remember that if you bargain too hard, sheer poverty might make a craftsman accept a poor price just so that he can feed his family that day.
Pay what something is worth to you.
No time to waste
Waste disposal methods are often very basic, so think about what happens to your rubbish. Take biodegradable products and as little packaging as you can. Discarded plastic bottles can ruin a landscape – worth thinking about when you buy bottled water. Tap water is often assumed to be of poor quality even when it is fine to drink. If you are unsure, use water purification tablets.
Keep children smiling
It is best never to give anything directly to children, not even sweets – a child who is begging may think there is no need to go to school. There are plenty of ways to help that will have a much more positive impact. You could donate to a local school, hospital or orphange for example.
Switch Off and Relax
Whilst your visit may provide some economic benefits to local people, it can also use up scarce resources. For example, water is in short supply in many tourist destinations, and hotels put a huge strain on an already limited resource.
One tourist can use as much water in one day as a village would use to produce rice for 100 days.
Even the most ‘eco’ friendly hotels may be using local people’s water supplies so do please ask your hotel manager about their policy on water use. And do your bit by using as little as possible. The places you visit on holiday are often the ones most threatened by climate change. Don’t forget your good habits just because you are on holiday – remember to turn off lights and fans when you leave your room and don’t leave the TV on standby.
Tips when flying
» Think about holidaying closer to home. The ‘staycation’ has been the catchphrase of 2009 and the trend is set to continue.
» Try and avoid internal flights within a destination. Use local public transport where possible or go on foot or by train.
» Think about taking fewer shorter breaks by air. Shorter flights and multiple stopovers are more polluting per passenger mile than longer flights as take off and landings generate a significant part of the total emissions per flight.
» Enjoy fewer, but longer breaks where your holiday creates some real benefits to conservation and local communities in the tourism destination.
» Fly more carbon efficiently. Choosing an airline that fills its planes and flies direct will help reduce your carbon impact, as will choosing a charter or economy flight. You can choose and compare the most carbon efficient carriers at our carbon friendly carriers
