Green Holidays

Cod & Chips; Tuna & Sweetcorn and Salmon and Cucumber sandwiches – Just STOP!

Of course, as humans in a developed nation – we can eat whatever we choose; but should we be a little more picky?

As consumers, we can demand whatever we want from retailers and manufacturers without donning placards, signing a 10,000 people petition or starting any riots.

How? you may ask – How else can you get people to listen to your opinions?

It’s called: Your Choice.

By choosing to buy a certain product, we are also choosing to leave something else behind – and it is what is left behind that forces retailers and manufacturers make big changes.

If 40,000 people all chose not to eat cod this week – there would be plenty of it left on the shelves of shops or in the fridges or restaurants. And this means that they probably won’t order any more of it for a while.

It also means that they are selling out of all the other fish products that you are buying, and so need to buy more of those to suit your needs.

Basically, your shopping choices can help to make big changes – and save threatened species.

Cod, Tuna and Salmon:
Of course you can still chose to eat any of these threatened species if they are available for sale when you eat out on holiday, but it is interesting to know a bit about what makes them so attractive to fishermen.

Firstly, they are big and live in shaols or behave in a way which makes them easy to catch; and due to their size and tasty flesh, they make more money per fish than the same weight of sardines (tuna can weigh up to 200kg and are mostly muscle – but the same weight of sardines would be riddled with bones and guts – even if they are still just as tasty).

The only downside here is that the reason they get so big is because they live for so long – and living a long time generally means that they reach sexual maturity later in life. Ultimately, if we catch more adults than can be replaced by reproduction then we have a serious problem.

A second downside to these ‘higher’ fish, is that they are predatory fish and so have to eat lots of other smaller fishes to get so big themselves. And as happened with Tuna recently, they can accumulate very high levels of toxin (a little bit from each of the smaller fish they ate over the years) and can actually became dangerous to humans if ingested.

The Answer?
We need to do the opposite to what we do now.

By aiming to eat all those little tiny fish we could not only help the larger fish numbers to recover, but we could also eat more sustainably and more healthily!

Smaller fish like herring, kippers and sardines reproduce very fast – so catching the adults doesn’t affect the number of young still in the water; and as they are not predatory fish, they will not accumulate high levels of toxins and heavy metals through their feeding habits.

And, as they are not normally caught by the big trawlers (who want to save all the space on their ships for the larger species), these fish can be caught by more sustainable and small scale fishermen making the most of the oceans along our coasts without affecting fish stocks.

So, next time you pull over in a small village for a travelling lunch – try something different!

Your actions alone can make the countryside a better place for yourself and others.

By sharing your adventures – I don’t mean inviting other people along to your picnics, dog walks or countryside rambles – I mean allowing them to have as much fun as your yourself would expect.

Your actions can directly affect other people who are within a few feet or even a few miles of you while you are outdoors – but they can also affect people who follow in your footsteps a few weeks or even a few years after you.

How you may wonder? But it is all quite simple.

The Countryside Shop:
Every inch of the countryside is owned and managed by someone. Whether it is a private landowner, a charitable body or your local council – someone is looking after the land and using it or maintaining it according to their needs.

You are however, permitted to walk through their land, fields, forests, glades and even gardens on footpaths (or for a small fee) if they are on a footpath, bridleway or other right of way. But you are only a visitor.

Imagine the countryside as you would a high street shop. You are allowed in – even welcomed in – but there are unspoken ‘rules’ – like a society code. For example you can just go in and break things, scream and shout, play loud music, drop litter, let your dog run wild, allow your kids to climb on display areas or run into ‘private’ areas or eat their food and scare of other customers.

Yet people do this in the countryside all the time.

What Happened Next?
Well, firstly in this shop – you would be seriously affecting their profits – and just like any business they react to problems and can’t afford to lose money.

But how can they make money if you are scaring off their other customers and have left the shop in such a state that they have actually spend money to fix things and replace broken stock. However, some things are irreplacable – so they may never have them in the shop again.

And secondly, they may well introduce a few rules to make sure that these things don’t happen again, like not allowing children or dogs, closing off certain areas at certain times, charging people to go in to get some money back and changing what they sell.

In the same way, landowners who suffer from vandalism, injured livestock and crop damage may put up extra fencing and funnel the ‘humans’ down a thin footpath rather than allowing them free access to the land.

photo credit: Crystian Cruz

Other Changes:
They may also be forced to lock gates, block entrances to farms and other buildings that aren’t actually on the footpath but were a beauty or were of great interest to walkers like yourself.

They may have to introduce entrance fees to car parks or other areas to re-coup some of their lost funds – which you will have to start paying if you want to visit the area – or maybe close off the ‘free parking’ that they had allowed on their land until all the rubbish that was dumped their was costing too much to have removed!

And damage to certain rare plants or wildlife species may be too much for that species to survive there anymore – so it will be lost forever just becasue you wanted to take that unusual plant home with you!

So noise and vandalism can affect more than just other walkers on that day – and carelessness, selfish actions and laziness can change the very landscape we love over time.

The countryside can’t keep going in its current state if we don’t do everything we can to preserve or improve it. If landowners can only run their business by shutting out humans – then that is just what they will have to do!

You know how to pack a rucksack properly – but what about save a life?

We all learn to pack our racksacks top heavy, learn which wildfood we can eat, how to get our tents back in their tiny bags, how to purify water and how to run away from a bear.

But what about help another human being?

When was the last time you took a first aid lesson? At school, in your teens or because your workplace told you to go?

Why do we wait – when our friends or family could get injured at any time!

Things that we learn on these courses could save other peoples lives – as well as our own, so why don’t we sign up in droves?
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What are you going to do?
Things change all the time in medicine and first aid – so some things your parents told you or that you learnt over 5 years ago might not still be current – like laying a person who fainted on their back with their legs raised. Wrong.

How about pinching the top of the nose and tipping the head back to stop a nose bleed! Wrong. Putting soothing creams or lotions on a burn – WRONG!

You don’t even check for a pulse anymore – there are better, more effective ways to save a life.

Obviously we all hope that we never have to deal with an emergency – but if you like to travel a lot – especially out in the countryside, emergency first aid could be your only chance of survival.

Call The Emergency Services!
It is all well and good to assume that the emergency services will come and save the day – but if the casualty isn’t breathing or is bleeding heavily – then 10 minutes is too long to wait. And you will probably be out in the countryside or up a mountain!

photo credit: Adam Tinworth

So, you could save someone by starting first aid straight away.

Immediate Action:
I can’t teach you first aid in this article – but I know that making sure that someone is breathing is more important that calling 999 in the first instance. The time it takes you to make the call is more time that they aren’t breathing.

By first checking the airways are clear and listening for breathing you could have done all that was needed to save a life. People who are unconscious and on their backs can suffocate on their own tongue – so by you moving their head to free the tongue – you can help them breathe again. Then, by putting them in the recovery position – and knowing that they can still breathe – you could have just saved their life.

However, if you make the call first; all the while you are trying to describe where you are for the emergency services to find you – they will be getting worse.

First Aid is about dealing with the most critical thing first – like not breathing. There is no point stopping them bleeding if they aren’t breathing, and no point moving them into a more comfortable place if they aren’t breathing either.

And an Emergency First Aid course can help you understand why things are important and when they are not. The course will help you gain confidence in your actions even if they seem rather odd and ‘different’ to what other people are saying.

You would have taken the most up-to-date course (to protect your friends and family) so it will be the best you can do for a stranger too!

And thank you for caring.

Green Travel keeps working even when you have stopped!

Now we all know that parking in town can be a complete nightmare at the best of times – and I suppose that is why we favour purpose-built car parks as a result.  They usually have clearly marked out car-size spaces for everyone to park in and arrows telling you which way to drive so you don’t bump into other drivers!

That way – we all know that they have worked out the greatest number of spaces that that particular car park can hold and everyone can fit in with no wasted space – or accidents!

However, not so for the country car park or the long parking bays with only the end zones marked out.

How is it best to park in these spaces when you first arrive?

Eco Friendly Parking:
Now you might not think that where you park could have eco friendly – or not so eco friendly – consequences, but it does.

Take for example the person parking infront of an entrance or right infront of a sign that says ‘Do Not Park Here’  You can tell immediately that this car could cause other people some trouble – wasting their time, their money and possibly causing an argument.

But can you see how they are also reducing the revenue of local services, decreasing visitor numbers for local attractions and businesses as well as possibly affecting the number of people that visit that location over the next 50 years!

Obviously these are scaled up problems – but if you arrived in a town or remote beauty spot only to find that you can’t park anywhere or others have been irresponsible – you might never return.

If you had to drive 40 minutes to visit an old church and you could never find a space there – would you keep going back year after year?

Or you just wanted to grab a quick snack and there was never a space outside the shop when you drove by – wouldn’t you just find somewhere else?

But what happens to those places when you decide to go elsewhere?  Who buys their products, uses their services or donates to their cause?

Think About It:
So, what can you do to make sure that you don’t affect your local services when you pop into town or drive into the countryside to walk the dog?

Firstly – think about how you can maximise the number of spaces in the place you are visiting.  Put simply – always park up to the edges or the spaces and close to any other vehicles on site.

photo credit: Blyzz

If there is a car in the middle of nowhere and you park away from it in the middle of nowhere too – how can you be sure that an exact number of cars can fit into the gap you have left? Surely you have been looking for a space before and thought ‘if only that car was a foot to the left it would create enought space for a whole car’.

Obviously nothing you can do about it while you wait – but very often when that person does move – someone else parks right in the same place themselves – just the 1 car instead of 2.

And those thoughtless people who park half a car away from the end of a bay!  I mean there was no reason not to park up the edge of the bay – leaving all the rest of the bay free for other vehicles – but they chose to just park wherever they wanted making sure that other people couldn’t park close to the shops/doctors/hotel/castle/seafront/etc.

Your Choice:
Now I know there are lots of different size cars on the road, and it seems a bit weird to park next to another car when the rest of the car park is empty – but it won’t always be empty.

People need to visit places to keep them there – and so surely, the more people that can park close to where they want to go, the more money they will spend there.

And it’s not all about using public transport either – I mean if I am on my way home from somewhere in my car and need to grab some bread or milk – I don’t want to have to walk miles to get them – I want to be able to pull up and park real close to the store and pop in and out in a second.  So, if I can’t get close in the car – I will go to another shop where I know I can.

Not everyone can walk a long way either and buses don’t go absolutely everywhere – so people do need to use their cars to get to places – and so rather than just pulling up somewhere are parking without a care for anyone else – think eco.

If you want that store to be there for your convenience – then you need to help it get as many customers as it can to turn a profit.  If you want to keep using that car park near the National Trust woodland – then make sure as many people as possible can park there are pay their money to keep it open!

If you park for too long in a space, take up more than 1 space or block other road users – you are harming the very services and locations that you are using yourself.

You might have driven there in as ‘green’ a way as you could – so don’t spoil it when you get there!

If you want to live in a Mediterranean climate – carry on regardless!

Climate change is real – and is happening every day.  Your choices every hour, even every minute are making it a reality.

You may well now be bored of hearing that you should ‘turn off your lights’, ‘don’t leave the TV on stand-by’ and ‘turn down the thermostat by 1 degree’ – but people still aren’t doing it!

I can visit a friends house and see these very basics being ignored; and taps left dripping, single item washes and radiators heating empty rooms.  People just aren’t taking this whole thing seriously.

And as a result – the world is getting warmer……

Your Green Holidays:
So, you need to make sure that the people you are paying your hard earned money to for holidays, trips and other services are doing their bit.

If you want to stay home and admire the beautiful Lake District, the Fens or some beautiful coastal villages – then you need to make sure that they can survive climate change:

If the temperature of the Earth rises just 2 degrees – you will no longer have those clear lakes.  The warmer weather will encourage flash floods – which will in turn encourage algal growths – as well as reduce the amount of water reaching the ground.  And with less water falling as rain in the first place; humans will need to ‘take’ more of it for survival and industry – so you won’t be finding it laying about in ponds and lakes!

Higher temperatures will also bring rising sea levels – and so the low-lying Fens will soo be underwater.  Just a meter sea level rise could see vast swathes of eastern England permanently underwater.  All that land which was so carefully drained for farming will be lost to ‘poisonous’ salty marshes – useless for human agriculture and living.

Rising sea levels and increased storms will soon put an end to a trip to the seaside!  Many cliffs and low level defences will be overcome by violent storms or just increased erosion.  Many houses are lost each year already due to this effect – but it could be worse if it happens when the country is already stressed.  Funding won’t be available to save a few cottages from destruction when the capital is under threat too!

photo credit: Orange County Archives

Higher temperatures and less rain will also mean that your local species will start to be outcompeted by more drought-resistant plants and animals.  Gone will be the oaks and chestnuts and in will come the corks and palms.  Apples won’t get their frosts so will soon die out and we will have oranges and lemons instead.

As a result, all the insects and fungi that feed on these plants will be gone too – and it feeds up the food chain.  If there are no insects to feed the blue tits and robins – they will be gone too – and the owls and hawks and foxes that feed on them?  If the seeds of these trees are no longer available – then what will the squirrels and deer eat?

Your Impact:
By all means carry on going on your trips – as your money spent on local services is vital for keeping these places alive and cared for – but make some demands of your own before booking.

I know it all sounds a bit petty to ask that your towels aren’t washed every day and food is locally sourced – but unless you do these things you are directly contributing to climate change and the ultimate demise of the English countryside.

You often hear the quotes of ‘if everyone in the world did A, then we could save so much of B’.  But everyone in the UK isn’t even doing A – so how can we make a real difference?

With your money. 

Money really does talk in the service industry – and if someone is running an eco friendly hotel and bed and breakfast; they should be encouraged to keep that up – with your money.

People who don’t make an effort to be green and continue to waste resources, waste water and buy cheap plastic over-packaged products should be left out of your holiday plans – ie: no money – you don’t stay with them at all!

They can either change their ethics to stay in business – or you can make sure they become extinct instead of our native wildlife and plants!

Could Supporting Local Bee Farmers Help Reduce Demands On The Environment?

We need to think big these days – and certainly look to be sympathetic to the developing world – who are living in conditions similar to those that we were only a few 100 years ago.

They are mainly subsistence farmers or herders who live on what they can grow and the little that they can sell.  They have to rely on resources that are local to them and are as good as free – just as those in the US and Europe did not so long ago.

Now, unfortunately – we are painfully aware that living like this is not going to be possible for the millions of people now currently living in the developing world.

The climate is changing to make herding and farming virtually impossible in some areas; the population has risen to ridiculous and unsustainable numbers making a few trees for the family firewood become a whole woodland for the expanding village; and the demands of the (comparatively) richer individuals are stripping whole countries bare of resources, taking land and water from local people and dumping waste in their backyards.

So – What Can We Do?
Well, as we know what is currently ‘damaging’ to our planet – we can use our buying power to make the right choices.

Just as back home – what you buy determines what manufacturers make – the same applies to internationally traded goods.  Although the honest truth sometimes slips by us:

If you keep buying illegally logged hardwoods (ie. by not opting for FSC approved alternatives) you are actively supporting the destruction of the rainforests and the extermination of orangutans, jaguars, and the endless number of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and plants that depend on them.

If you keep buying any old fish or seafood that you like the look of (rather than opting for MSC approved sustainable alternatives) you are actively supporting the extinction of many endangered species that are being over-fished.  You are also actively supporting the wasteful and destructive nature of bottom-trawling and long-line fishing that are killing off more than just the fish you get to eat; this includes all sorts of birds, mammals, other fish and sea creatures.

I could go on with this list – but sometimes we don’t think or the end result of our ‘easy’ food choices.

Alternative Living:
So back to the bees: They reproduce extremely fast, do all the hard work themselves and don’t need a huge amount of space to grow. What a great alternative to cattle and dessicated crops! But they need someone to buy the honey.

And so, if a family has chosen to ‘farm’ these insects rather than farm something illegal or damaging to the environment – then shouldn’t we support that?

All across the globe we are trying to help communities to become more self-sufficient and sustainable by introducing bee-keeping, fairtrade specialist products and co-ops so that they don’t have to plunder their local area just to survive. 

We are also helping to make sure that they have access to biomass heating, solar cookers, water purifiers and education and skills so that they don’t have to depend on limited rainwater, local forests, bushmeat and food handouts.

So, make sure that you support these efforts back home with your shopping choices.  If they are making something that you don’t buy – then they won’t be sustainable alternatives, will they?

If they are saving the rainforest and it’s endangered wildlife buy manufacturing fairtrade honey, organic coffee or FSC approved furniture – then you had better make sure that you buy it over the ‘not so eco friendly’ alternatives.

If not – then they will have to go back to living off the land – even if that means killing another tiger, clearing some lush forests or over-grazing their land with cattle.

Your choice!

photo credit: Vinni123

Need a quick re-cap for 2010 on why we take green holidays?

Be Open To New Things
Remember that not everyone does things the way you do them – so make sure that you are wiling to give something new a go if asked. It will certainly allow you to experience a different culture – and you never know – you might really like it!

Be Fair To Everyone
Try to put money into local hands rather than the firms that run the big hotels and tours. By all means haggle for your goods, but a few pence saved by you getting the best price could mean the vendor having to settle for little profit – and having to sell a lot more for their money.

Be Aware Of Differences
Respect the culture and think ahead when dressing for the day. Should you be wearing shoes or not – covering your shoulders or your head. It is all very important to the people who live there even though it means nothing to you!

Be Respectful To Everything
Remember when taking pictures and traipsing across fields and ancient sites – that these places could be very important to local people and their culture. Don’t assume that everything is there for you to explore and take pictures of -and that include people and their homes.

Be Unique On Your Trip
Don’t just follow the tourist track and go to all the places in the guidebooks – use that as a starting point and go from there. Yeah – see the sites that made the country attractive to you in the first place – but visit at different times or in a different way – or maybe visit a sister site or one that is less explored.

Be Aware Of The Options
Make sure that you check tour operators, airlines, hotels, and other travel companies before you make a choice. Check their eco credentials before handing over any money and make sure that you write and tell the best and the worst why you will or won’t be using them this time!

Be Generous And Kind
Don’t offer kids and beggars money and sweets – as this can lead to all sorts of social issues. Take pens and other useful but possibly hard to come by items for the local people you meet to encourage education and entertainment rather than tooth decay and stealing!

Be An Ethical Tourist
Come away from your vacation knowing that you have not only visited an amazing place and experienced amazing things, but that you have left it as it was before you arrived, or possibly made it a little bit better!