Environmental Sustainability Principles
Planeterra and our community partners care about the places they call home and believe that tourism should help to improve environmental well-being for the benefit of communities, not degrade or misuse the natural resources and environment.
We recommend the following activities be avoided to the best of a community’s ability to protect the natural environment and the people that live there:
- Activities that result in pollution of air, water or land through the introduction of harmful materials or waste, resulting in negative health impacts for communities
- Activities motivated by tourism that lead to the degradation of ecosystems, such as clear-cutting forests
- Use of single-use plastics where they can be avoided
- Overuse of natural resources that could lead to their depletion, or insufficient resources for community members in order to meet the needs of travellers.
We consider the following activities as good practices:
- When using plastics, following the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” model to decrease environmental impacts
- Proper management of trash through local systems
- Regularly monitor natural environments and track changes over time, applying responsive management where necessary.
Overall, Planeterra and our community partners believe that travel experiences should leave a net positive impact on the environment for the community, and acknowledge that different practices are needed to suit different environments.