Ethical Tourism

What is ethical tourism?

People have differing ideas about what makes ethical tourism and for me the definition given by the travel website responsibletravel.com is a good summary:

They say:

"Responsible tourism can apply to any type of holiday, from a luxury beach villa to a volunteering project. Responsible tourism simply means holidays that care about local communities & culture as well as wildlife conservation & the environment."

What I'm looking for is a holiday that will enable me to benefit the local community.  Much as I'd like to say I'd volunteer in an orphanage or build a school in a remote village, that's not what I mean.  I just simply want the money I spend to go directly into the pockets of local people. 

As I started to plan this year's 'holiday with a difference' to Turkey for my family of four what I mostly had in mind was that I wanted an 'activity holiday' and that I wanted to avoid the larger hotel complexes that to me could have been anywhere in the world, and particularly the all -inclusive type holidays that are quite prevalent these days.

I have family and friends who are fans of all-inclusive and I don't deny that the water park hotels with their amazing slides and kids clubs look like paradise for young children, but my children are in their teens and were prepared to humour me in return for some adrenalin kicks at some point during the holiday.

I admit that at first I was looking for a package tour - I knew nothing about our chosen destination, spoke none of the language and didn't know where to start, and that's how I came across responsibletravel.com who are an advertising site that can provide a wide variety of holidays and explain how each is in some way benefiting the local community.

However, in the end I took the brave (or mad) leap and booked everything myself. The advantage of having looked at package tours is that I had a guide budget and that helped me when Googling for rental property and now I have flights, transfers, car hire, activities, villa for a week with a private pool, family-run boutique hotel for a couple of nights and a two day boat trip all for less than the cheapest package holiday I can find. I plan to eat in local restaurants a few times and other than that we will buy from markets and local shops. But ethical? 

Are there down sides to being green?

Well... this morning I have 44 chocolatey candles to wash.  I'd say that's a down side, but I'll just reward myself for being good with a slice of the (slightly waxy) but extremely yummy chocolate cake.

I Hate Waste!

Those readers who know me, will know just how much I hate wasting anything. But sometimes despite our efforts it happens.  I still can't believe this just happened though!

Yesterday I gave a presentation at a conference in Paris. I travelled out the night before on the Eurostar and stayed overnight near the Gare du Nord. Rather than eating alone in a restaurant which I hate, I decided to buy something at Marks and Spencer in St Pancras station to eat on the train.  I like Marks and Spencer because their sandwich packaging is compostable. I have a weakness for their egg sandwiches and so along with some salad that's what I bought. BUT to my horror just as I was about to open it my sixth sense kicked in and my eye was drawn to the words 'single cream' in the ingredients. I'm horribly allergic to cream.

The fact that I was travelling to Paris to be a guest speaker at a conference pushed away my initial thoughts of 'oh well, it is probably only a little bit.' So then I wondered what I would be able to do with my uneaten sandwich. I decided I would offer it to someone sleeping rough.

This in mind as I walked the half a kilometre to my hotel, the offer was on the tip of my tongue when the first two people I passed who appeared to be sleeping rough suddenly jumped up from their sleeping bag beds spread on a low wall outside the post office and started assembling a tripod with some fairly nifty looking camera equipment.

So, I arrived at my hotel sandwich still in my possession.

Next morning I kept the sandwich to hand hoping to provide someone with a nice breakfast as I set off back to the metro to cross Paris for my conference. Just as I approached the platform there was a man sitting on a stretched out sleeping bag but I felt a little embarrassed surrounded by people and the train was just arriving. However, determined to execute my plan I stayed on the platform when the train pulled out.  With no one else around to judge my behaviour as weird, I went back to the man and asked him if he would like a sandwich.

"No thank you just now, but maybe next time" he replied politely nodding his head.

'Hmm,' I thought. Maybe third time lucky?

Presentation done and on my way home I did see a few more suspects, but on the opposite platform while I was still on the metro.  I retraced my journey back to the Gare du Nord and boarded the Eurostar back to St Pancras.  Maybe in London I could find a grateful recipient for my M&S Sandwich? Alas no! Between St. Pancras and Paddington and then onto my local station no hungry mouths were spotted. So this morning the sandwich sits in my fridge having been to Paris and back and awaits the moment when I cut it up and feed it to the birds. I hope they are hungry!

How do you dispose of those Cool Packs for sports injuries?

Does anyone know whether there is an environmentally friendly way to dispose of the cool packs such as the HypaCool Instant Cold Pack by SFA Group Ltd.?

I have two and I don't know what to do with them. I have no idea what is in them so I don't know if I can pour the contents away and recycle the plastic. I'm fed up with seeing them in my little pile of things I don't know what to do with that accumulates on my kitchen windowsill so today I've emailed the company that supplies them.  In the meantime please do let me know if you can tell me what is in these packs and how to dispose of them safely.

Thanks!

Green Electricity

It is many years ago now that I changed to the Power2 renewable energy plan provided by my existing electricity company, Southern Electric.

I have always made an effort to reduce the amount of electricity I use, choosing low energy light bulbs, turning off lights when we leave a room, drying my washing on a washing line rather than using the tumble dryer - you know the kind of thing.

So, a couple of years ago when my electricity provider wrote to me promoting the 'Better Plan' - a plan that rewards customers for reducing their electricity consumption year on year, I thought yes, why not?

Take a look at their website and see what you think..... Click on the tab 'Being Green', click on the tab 'Go One Step Further'.  I don't think I realised that by 'going one step further' I was actually coming off my renewable electricity plan.

So I switched plan, my electricity monitor arrived and I set about consistently trying to look in to making sure I was saving electricity wherever I could. And even though I thought I was already careful about saving electricity, I managed to reduce my energy consumption by 20% in a year.

Now, I'm not knocking this altogether, because I did make those savings and it was in part down to the awareness raising that the 'Better Plan' information provided, though, I'll also point out that some of it happened by accident -

1. My kettle (a hand me down I acquired when I went to college, dare I say it, 20 years ago) blew up and we had to get a new one.  Electrical items are manufactured to be more economical these days.

2. My computer was so old and slow that I decided to switch to a laptop -  second hand but only a couple of years old and much whizzier than what I was making do with. Laptops use less energy than desktops.

But other little things that probably helped were trying to be more organised with the washing so that I didn't leave it languishing in the washing machine when it was finished.  That way less of it needed ironing.  Oh, and trying not to boil the kettle three times before I actually remembered to pour the hot water on to my tea.

So, I'm not suggesting that Better Plan isn't a good idea - rewarding people for using less electricity  has to be a good idea. But, two years in to being a 'Betterplan' customer I enquired about companies that gave cash-back for the energy generated by my solar hot water system and contacted Good Energy.   They did a price comparison for me and although the daily rate was lower, the unit price was just slightly higher.

Readers of this blog will probably already know that my main focus is to write about greener living that doesn't cost more than the non-green option, so at that point I decided not to change, as I thought I was on a green energy plan with my current provider. However, the nice lady I was talking to at Good Energy said,  "You might like to subscribe to our news letter where we publish our prices because we constantly strive to compete and we hate it when we can't." As a parting question, she asked me if I was already on a green tariff.  

"Yes," I said, and that's when I starting asking questions.  

I checked the website to see if it said that Better Plan was renewable energy.  It didn't.  But, it did say 'Go one step further'. The person I spoke to at Southern Electric explained to me that although Better Plan wasn't renewable energy, it was green because the focus was on helping people cut down on their usage.  I don't dispute that, but, I felt a little cheated.

The cynic in me thought perhaps there had been so much demand for the Power2 renewable energy tariff with the price promise of not being more expensive than conventional tariffs that they needed a ruse to get people off their renewables given that their energy mix is only 10% renewables, but surely not?


For me, one step further has to be 100% renewables, so I switched. 

Making the most of that Halloween pumpkin

Did you buy a pumpkin this year?

I love making Halloween lanterns with my pumpkins. But I also love eating pumpkin too. So last year when we missed out on buying a pumpkin I was disappointed not to get my annual fix. This year though, we decided to convert a tatty corner of garden that used to be a compost heap into an extra vegetable patch and we grew our own pumpkins.  Not going to miss out this year!

My favourite is pumpkin soup, especially if it is a little spiced up with some chillies and ginger - it makes a lovely winter warmer.  I've just had some for lunch.

Having scooped out the flesh we washed the seeds and dried them ready to plant next year.  One pumpkin gives quite a lot of seeds, so I'll probably have plenty to give away.  They will be ready to store by the weekend. If friends and family don't want them I'll give them to my local community shop.

Having grown our own this year we have five to use, so I'm looking up other things I can do with them.  Pumpkin gratin is great and I plan to toast the seeds from the rest of the pumpkins - you don't wash them if you are toasting them as it all adds flavour

We roasted some pumpkin with Sunday lunch, but although it has a lovely sweet flavour it was a little watery. Does anyone know of any good tips for roasting? I'm sure there's a way to get a better texture.

Abundance

Looking for something to do in half term? How about fruit picking?

I recently heard about a group called Abundance which arranges fruit picking for people who either can't or don't want to pick their own fruit.

You can read more about this on greenjottings. 


If you know people who don't pick their fruit it is worth putting them in touch with one of these groups. They can choose to keep the fruit that has been picked for them. Unwanted fruit is then given to charity.  Windfalls and damaged fruit is made into pies, crumbles, chutneys, jams and all in a good cause.


I will try to find out whether there is a nationwide list or website where people can find details of their nearest group.  When I do I'll be sure to post it here but in the meantime a few groups are listed in this article in Time Out.