Members Practising Sustainable Tourism

“Keep Hydrated”. This is the key piece of advice our Tour Leaders and guides from Journey Latin America provide to our customers. Whether it is in the humid tropics of Central America, the windswept plains of Patagonia or the high altitude plains of the Andes having a filled water bottle close to hand is a simple and effective way to keeping healthy and alert while on tour. The knock on affect of this is that numerous bottles of mineral water are bought and consumed daily considering the water from the tap is not drinkable. This in turn leads to huge amounts of plastic waste which, as widely reported, has reached critical levels for the environment.
Journey Latin America want to combat this by offering our group tour passengers the opportunity to purchase a Water Bottle with an extremely effective water filtration system at a 50% discount. We will monitor the impact by asking our tour leaders to note how many bottles of water would otherwise have been used. We envisage that every customer taking one of these bottles with them on tour will mean on average 10 less bottles bought and discarded per person per trip. We hope to reach at least 80% of our group tour passengers (approximately 600 clients) in the first year of the pledge and then expand the initiative to include our passengers on Tailor Made trips, of which we book over 2,000 a year. We feel this is an effective and tangible way of reducing the plastic waste in the continent we care so deeply about while also including our customers in the fight against the polluting of these incredible destinations.

• - We want to help reduce plastic waste from discarded water bottles in all of our destinations
• - The program involves everyone from our clients, tour leaders and office staff with the aim to also include our suppliers.

The Mountain Company would like to thank our guides and trekkers for enthusiastically embracing our AITO Project Protect pledge to help make the environment in the Himalaya and Karakoram cleaner. Our initial pledge was to remove 220kg of rubbish, and this was exceeded with a total of over 350kg removed from trekking routes in Nepal, Bhutan, India and Pakistan.

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Africa Collection has been dealing with South Africa as a tourist destination for 20+ years. We have seen this amazing country develop, and visitor numbers steadily increase. However, in many areas, social & economic transformation has been slower than anticipated. Africa Collection is partnering with Uthando (meaning Love) in Cape Town, a non-profit organisation that supports an amazing collection of innovative and inspiring community development projects. In 2017 we will donate £5 000 to work with an exciting youth initiative:

PingOut
Also referred to as street or outdoor ping-pong, PingOut is more than simply ping-pong! The PingOut project is based on the idea of bringing social togetherness, physical activity, design and art into the public space. We aim to provide 5 x 1.2 ton ping-pong tables - fully manufactured, delivered and installed (by a civil engineer).

During your stay in Cape Town you can join one of Uthando's authentic, uplifting and fun day tours, visiting the community projects which Uthando is working with and supporting - and by doing so you are also making a donation, as part of the tour price. The focus of the tour is to visit interesting, innovative and inspiring community development projects, and at the same time helping these wonderful initiatives continue with their efforts. 'Pack For a Cause' is a project whereby we will also advise you what you can bring and donate when visiting the community projects.

• Bringing Ping Pong to the community in Cape Town

In 2017 as part of our AITO PROTECT project, Scandinavian Travel introduced carbon neutral holidays and offset 181 tonnes of carbon. Following a successful launch, from July 2018 we will become the first Scandinavian specialist Tour Operator to exclusively provide carbon neutral holidays.

Scandinavia has a reputation as an environmentally responsible region, and as specialists in this area Scandinavian Travel wanted to make similar commitments to the environment and climate. There is a significant carbon footprint associated with travel, especially greenhouse gas emissions from air travel, and limiting the footprint of our customers continues to be an appropriate pledge for us.

This year we aim to offset 500 tonnes of carbon by covering the cost to offset the per person carbon footprint in all our holiday packages. As in 2017, offsetting will be through two accredited projects, but this year we are letting our customers choose the second project we donate to. Voting will take place in July through an online poll sent out to our customer database by email and social media. This year we aim to raise awareness of our pledge internally and externally.

Our carbon neutral holidays provide Scandinavian Travel customers with an effortless way of travelling responsibly in Scandinavia. By delivering carbon neutral products we are directly contributing to the fight against global climate change. This directly benefits our destinations and will help protect the winter sports industry for future generations. Scandinavian Travel clients can be proud to book and travel with a responsible Tour Operator.

• http://www.scandinavian-travel.co.uk/carbon-neutral-holidays

Nomadic Thoughts are the UK office of New Lifeline - supporting vulnerable people through social, health and education programmes.

• We are proud to continue working with and supporting a variety of sustainability projects across Mexico and Guatemala.
• http://nomadicthoughts.com/speak-to-an-expert/sustainable-tourism/new-lifeline/

Martin Randall Travel is proud to now support the India Solar Water Heating project through its carbon offset scheme.

• This project provides in-house hot water supplies fueled by renewable energy to homes, community buildings and small to medium-sized businesses throughout India.
• We are partnered with this project through the organisation Carbon Neutral.

We are proud to be members of the John Muir Trust., the leading wild land conservation organisation in the UK, dedicated to protecting wild places. We support the Trust in its belief that wild places are essential for people and wildlife.

• Safeguard iconic wild lands such as Ben Nevis, Sandwood Bay and the Red Cuillin
• Support campaigns against inappropriate developments in wild places
• Reinforce John Muir’s message that we need wild places for nature and people.

Cedarberg set up a small rural pre-school in South Africa in 2001. We know how important a good early education can be, especially for children from poor or previously disadvantaged backgrounds, so that they are not already behind at age 7.

• 2 classrooms with 2 properly qualified teachers and a teacher’s assistant.
• Every year there are about 50+ children.
• We follow the set pre-school curriculum
• Regular funding drives to get extra money for school outings
• New - breakfast!

Our local team is working together with two young tourism professionals originating from Kalaw. They decided to set up a project there that is focused on protecting nature, elephants and the traditions of local people.

• The project includes creating a natural environment for Myanmar elephants and helping the local population to use education and micro finance to emerge from poverty.
• It is not encouraged to ride the elephants.

In Guyana, we stay at Karanambu Ranch home of Diane McTurk, well known for her work in rehabilitating orphaned Giant River Otters to the wild.

• Diane has started the Karanambu Trust in an attempt to create a private protected area at Karanambu. The primary purpose of the protected area will be the protection of the habitat for the otters and ensuring their survival.