I love an untapped resource (as opposed to a very overstressed one). The responsible travel movement is perfect. It takes the huge global travel industry (1.2 billion people holidaying abroad in 2015) and shapes it into a force for good, rather than one that trashes local host communities, siphoning profits to rich countries.
It’s untapped partly because we’re encouraged to think like travel consumers (obsessed with injustices such as single-person supplements) and not as citizens of the world. But a few tour operators are determined to change us.
Intrepid Travel runs 1,000 carbon-neutral group tours, but keeps adding more interesting stuff, including a new programme to increase the number of female tour guides in India to 50%, and a lodge in Myanmar run in conjunction with ActionAid, where money stays in the community.
Crucially, Intrepid Travel says no, too – banning all elephant rides and phasing out orphanage visits, concluding that these support a system that is actually disruptive to the children, even though visitors want to help.
Kidney failure has recently forced the great activist-traveller Justin Francis, founder of Responsible Travel, to stay at home. He says this has made him confront what it’s like to have no access to travel. He has come up with Trip for Trip. When you buy a Responsible Travel holiday, the company can fund a child in Africa or Asia to visit a local tourist site (last November, 24 children from Swaziland visited a wildlife sanctuary for the first time). Francis wants to fund a million children’s trips by 2020.
Unlike those pitiful hotel signs about not changing towels to change the world (greenwash), responsible travel actually can.
The big picture: mapping Europe from outer space
The first earth observation photo was taken from space by the White Sands rocket 70 years ago. Now, every three days, two Sentinel-1 satellites (pictured) provide radar images of Europe, mapping everything from forest health to water resources. And every 12 days Sentinel-1 records the entire world, taking the guesswork out of predicting floods and crop yields, and protecting natural resources.
Well dressed: Frugi’s puddle buster range
A common lament from parents is the lack of affordable ethical kidswear, aside from organic cotton basics. Cornish brand Frugi continues to design answers: this time with a range of outerwear for rainy days. Problem-solving is in the company’s DNA. Having chosen low-impact cloth nappies for eco reasons, founder Lucy Jewson couldn’t find clothes to fit over her baby’s bottom, so she started manufacturing them. (I’m not sure how her son Tom feels about this anecdote some years on.) The rainwear range is produced from fibre made from recycled plastic bottles. As 60% of the world’s oil-based polyethylene terephthalate production goes into clothing and 30% to make drinking bottles, recycling bottles makes sense. Even better if these waterproof garments are handed on. Expect them to become family favourites.
Email Lucy at lucy.siegle@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @lucysiegle
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