Thursday, December 10, 2015

Need of the hour - # Responsible tourism

One of the greatest destressor is travel. It helps people handle stress of various kinds. Change in climate, change in place of stay, meeting new people, the journey ,the destination all these allows you to explore new energies. The whole idea of travelling is allowing yourself to experience something you haven’t done before.

Today, no matter what age, more and more of us are traveling for work and leisure compared to a few decades back. Needless to say our mode of traveling, our stay in hotels, resorts have all contributed to increase in Carbon foot prints.

While on a holiday or work, most of us think less about environmental degradation or unaware of the carbon foot prints we leave. But , When we think as a conscious global citizen , we share the world with over more than 6 billion people, our space and our resources are finite. How can we guarantee that there’s enough food, water, land and energy for the future gen. To promote tourism, m
any fancy resorts and hotels are built to meet the tourist demands. More and more trees are cut and lot of natural resources like sand, water are used for constructing them.  While it is necessary to boost tourism, it is also an equal responsibility to minimize the use of our natural resources and to decrease our carbon foot prints, It is now time for us to act responsibly when we travel, follow and promote “ responsible tourism”. 

Here are a few ideas to promote #responsible tourism.

1) we must promote and encourage hotels built and designed with minimal environmental impact. 


2)  promote, encourage and stay in hotels which reduce “food miles” and use “ farm to plate” or locally grown food.

3) Hotels or resorts can use biodegradable toiletries like soaps, shampoos, detergents and tell the tourists the benefits of this on the environment

4) Encourage the hotels to use solar heating and lighting or use CFC or energy saving bulbs

5) Ideally most hotels or resorts have a landscape. We can encourage them to grow more native and plants local to the region and reap their health benefits while the greenery around can offset the carbon foot prints.

6 )As a responsible tourist, While we travel we should ensure we plan and travel short routes and use that mode of transport where we leave less green gas emissions.

7) It is best to forego bottled water which travels miles to reach the users destination, instead it would be ideal to carry our own personal bottle and refill RO water at the hotel or during our journey. This way we can avoid the usage of use and throw plastic bottles. On an another note, it would be better to buy and always carry a personal copper bottle whose  copper charged water is a health benefit we reap.

8) instead of cold storage food which are refridgerated and reheated with microwave, we can opt for the “Pan to plate” freshly cooked food by minimizing the energy used by the appliances.

9) 
Plastics in the form of carry bags,cups, bottles, plates, spoons are the major contributors of pollution. As tourists/travelers,we avoid using disposables as far as possible and use reusables.

10)  We have to leave zero or minimal waste.  We  must dispose wastes like wrappers of biscuits, snacks, chocolates, fruit peels responsibly. We must avoid food wastes. Even the wasted food, we ensure it reaches the nearest bio gas plant and suggest the hotel, the  food excesses can be sent to the needy (incase, it is not a practice).

11) When we buy souvenirs, we buy from local artisans and promote local handicrafts as tourists which will augment the income of the local people.


12) we visit local areas of interest like museums, places of worship, handicraft centers and promote them during our conversations or through blogs or on social media.

13) hire and use services of the local workers and local transport .

14)  promote and encourage hotels which use the 3 R’s “ reduce, reuse and recycle” while we too practice the same.

While these are some of the ideas that can be promoted, I must say that I do practice most of what is written above and I dare to rewrite this famous quote on traveling


             “Take only memories, leave only footprints.”  Chief Seattle
as " Take only memories, leave only footprints, lessen the carbon footprints"
                   
“I am blogging for #ResponsibleTourism activity by Outlook Traveller in association with BlogAdda

Some of my memorable stays have been in such homestays/resorts


1) at a place called Peechi near Guruvayoor. This place was on the sholayur range of westernghats and close to the famous Athirapally falls. We stayed at a guest house which was designed and built by the famous Laurie baker who was famous for building with sustainable and local raw materials with focus on natural ventilation. This region is a total plastic free zone



2) at a resort in Farahabad near Srisailam. This resort has cottages built with mud, thatched roof and the lighting in the whole resort is solar powered. 


2 comments:

  1. Yes Yes Yes. Amen to all you have said.

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    1. Thanks Ramesh for commenting! This post is close to me :)

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