“Travel is the only thing that you buy that makes you richer”. Unfortunately, travel is also what is leaving the planet much poorer. With Travel contributing to a whopping Eight Percent of the world’s Carbon Emissions and with the world still not entirely out of the grip of a devastating pandemic, the need for sustainable travel is far more dire than ever before.
Identifying the space in Sustainable Tourism way before Pandemic hit our lives, Ecoplore has been steadily notching up not only accolades for its innovative thinking but also the number of Eco-stays that meet the tough standards it has for a listing on its roster. The criteria that a stay needs to fulfill to qualify for our listing are comprehensive and cover a wide range of environment friendly practices that aim at reducing the massive burden tourism puts on the planet.
The trail of Carbon Footprint due to tourism typically includes the transportation, the distance traveled, the ecological degradation caused by the construction of the place of stay (an apartment, resort or a hotel), the air-conditioning, the travel emissions by employees and by the food being transported to the hotel and so on and so forth. Not to mention the huge amount of Plastic and non-biodegradable waste generated in the process.
Ecoplore only lists properties that exist in harmony with their surroundings and leave bare minimal Carbon trail. Some of the criteria we look for before a collaboration are No use of plastic disposables, Home Composting of Kitchen Waste, Solar Powered Properties, Eco-stays built using only locally available material such as Mud, Bamboo or Stone, properties that grow most of their food and have provisions for harvesting rainwater and also, who employ local people thereby not only stemming migration to cities but also reducing the transportation emissions. And since the eco-stays are built with natural materials, they also need less electricity for remaining cool/warm.
To put things in perspective, a regular hotel room in the country typically generates Carbon emissions of nearly 75 Kilograms/night. A luxury hotel room takes the figure to a whopping 1k Kilograms/night, whereas an Eco-stay listed with Ecoplore only emits about 9 Kilograms of carbon per night.
With a post-pandemic world finally waking up to the realisation of a need to preserve Nature, Sustainable Tourism is being touted as the next big thing in travel. Ecoplore, with a core-team that consists of members who walk the talk when it comes to sustainable living, not only aims at tapping the vast potential that lay in the segment but also bring about a mindset change and bring more and more travellers into its green folds.
– by Prerna Prasad, Ecoplore
