Save Eco Destinations

Eco, eco, eco (it echoes!). It’s going to be an eco-friendly new year if we make it so! And we can do it. We will do it!

If we sustain and nourish our natural environment, it will sustain and nourish us back. You can be sure of that, because Mother Nature is a badass. She just needs a little support from us!

So let’s make some eco resolutions!

If you’re traveling, even if you’re planning for summer or next winter, you can decide on your eco resolutions now and take an environmentalist stance – this will allow it to permeate the rest of your lifestyle too.

You’ll be more likely to remember to rent a car with high mileage per gallon instead of a gas guzzler like an SUV, to offset your flights, to carpool even if it’s a little inconvenient, to turn off all your appliances at night, to not leave the lights on when you leave a room, to recycle, to choose reusable containers and plates for your next party, to opt for biodegradable sunscreen next time you’re in the sun, to leave the coral reefs alone when you’re scuba diving, even to volunteer for your next vacation, to turn off the tap while brushing your teeth, and on and on and on.

You’ll be more likely to go on an eco vacation, travel green, live green, and generally infuse your life with the beautiful color (and concept, of course!) that is green!

I will list my eco resolutions for 2010 below for inspiration, and I’d love love love to hear yours! Post your eco resolutions on your blog, submit an article about it somewhere, remind others to make eco resolutions too, and whatever else you can think of! It’s a gentle way to encourage others to be environmentally mindful.

My resolutions:

1.  Start an organic urban farming project at home and/or with other eco-conscious folk. Yay organic food! Yay cheap produce! Yay pure deliciousness! What’s not to like?

2. Keep bullying (I mean, gently reminding) my friends into carpooling.

3. Encourage everyone to choose reusable utensils, plates, and cups when throwing a party. Even offer to procure the materials!

4. Encourage others to make eco resolutions for 2010.

5. Persistently remind people to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Always set an example.

6. Only purchase recyclable products and materials.

7. Request that management switch to biodegradable pesticides.

8. Turn off the AC and open the windows when it’s cool out and my roommate isn’t looking. (Ha!)

9. Continue washing most dishes in the sink rather than using the dishwasher, and do it more.

10. Encourage others to use baking soda, vinegar, and other natural and biodegradable products for cleaning.

There you (and I) go! Let’s make some eco resolutions for 2010.

Happy New Year, everybody!

View from the MAYAB Holistic Center and Educational Retreat

MAYAB Holistic Center and Educational Retreat, opening this month, educates its guests “about critical environmental issues facing the coastal ecosystems of the Sian Ka’an [Biosphere Reserve] and surrounding area.”

Eco education

This is crucial, and something I wish all eco hotels did. Think about it: what if someone wants to help the environment and so chooses to vacation at an eco hotel, but then wears regular sunscreen while checking out coral reefs? What if a couple celebrates their wedding on the coast of Quintana Roo, where so many severely endangered sea turtles go to nest? Or if people with good intentions visit bird sanctuaries and fail to keep their mouths shut? Noooooooo!

Disaster!

Violating the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve

However, Mayab was built just north of Tulum in the Yucatán Peninsula within the Sian Ka’an Biosphere, a 1.3 million-acre nature reserve that also hosts Mayan ruins. I know what you’re thinking: this does not sound ecologically auspicious, sustainable and green as Mayab may tout itself to be. I absolutely agree.

Building a hotel – eco or otherwise – within a natural reserve is egregiously intrusive and atrocious.

(I’m not even going to go into the accommodations set up by the Sian Ka’an reserve itself!)

Photo by Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve

Sure, founder Delainia Haug means well, but placing her premises within a UNESCO World Heritage Site sounds like more of a marketing move than an environmentally magnanimous one.

As the eco hotel’s website says, “Approximately 36,000 tourists entered the reserve in the year 2000, and those numbers are expected to increase significantly each year.” And don’t forget “The increase in tourism and overdevelopment are threatening this fragile habitat.”

Oh, and “In the summer three species of endangered sea turtles come ashore to build their nests here.” I don’t think tourists should be trusted to respect nesting sites, no matter how ostensibly ecologically mindful they may be. Staying at a hotel placed right by these sites – not to mention being responsible for it – is decidedly irresponsible, to say the least.

How, then, could building a hotel within the Sian Ka’an Biosphere be ecologically responsible?

The good stuff

Apart from educating its guests, Mayab filters its grey and black water, turning the latter into organic matter. It is also developing a solar generated power system, composts, and recycles.

Also, retreats and programs are held to increase awareness about environmental issues.

What do you think?

Is its presence within a reserve ecologically laudable or destructive?

Leave a comment here and contact Delainia to voice your thoughts!

If you think popping ecstasy has no influence on the environment, let me prove you wrong.

Background

The Cardamom Mountains of Cambodia are the largest pristine area of rainforest in Southeast Asia. They host about 100 endangered species of animals.

Poachers and illegal logging have recently been expanding in the region. As the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime used to roam it, people stayed away. But once the fighting stopped, new criminals moved in. New roads have also made the area more accessible.

“Ecstasy oil”

The prized ingredient is sassafras oil, which is extracted from the extremely rare Mreah Prew Phnom trees – which are several hundred years old – through a distillation process. The raw, pungent, golden oil is most profitable as the necessary, key ingredient used to manufacture the illegal recreational drug ecstasy, a.k.a. MDMA.

The sale of sassafras oil is illegal in Cambodia, so criminal networks set up secret factories and then smuggle the oil out of the country, usually to Thailand or Vietnam, so it can be turned into a chemical used to make ecstasy.

Additional problems for the ecosystem

The ecosystem must also deal with the logging of trees other than the Mreah Prew Phnom, as the distillation process requires huge quantities of fuel wood.

Tim Wood of Fauna and Flora International (FFI) and Cambodian rangers fly by helicopter to look for smoke and clearings – signs of secret factories– and later visit the sites by foot for days at a time.

The sites are built near streams because the distillation process requires water – and the toxic, carcinogenic by-products end up in the water. After the oil is extracted, the sites are abandoned.

Conservationists are worried that “empty forest syndrome” is taking over the Cardamom Mountains as poachers kill its wildlife for food during their “ecstasy oil” raids.

Set it on fire

Ironically, when sites are found, rangers destroy all equipment and set fire to it. This is considered a necessary evil to prevent the criminals from coming back to the site and reestablishing it once they return, if the site is found to be in use rather than abandoned.

What a mess.

“These factories are located close to streams and by-products from the distillation process causes significant pollution of the environment. In addition, the distillation process itself uses enormous quantities of fuel wood from other rainforest trees. Finally, the factory workers typically engage in poaching wildlife from the surrounding forests to supplement their basic diets,” according to FFI.

Watch a video about the phenomenon here.

Something to think about the next time you consider buying ecstasy, kids. Tell your friends.

How carbon offsets work - image from Carbon Fund

Carbon Fund’s slogan is “reduce what you can, offset what you can’t.”

Sounds good, right?

But what about those people (most people?) who opt for carbon offsets merely to ease their guilt because they have never lifted a finger to reduce their ecologically destructive footprint?

Or – even worse – what if people buy carbon offsets so they can feel good about polluting more?  “I’m gone all day but I like to leave the AC on so it’s cool when I get back in the evening. Don’t worry – I offset my carbon footprint.” Or, “Honey, let’s each drive both our cars to the store even though we could carpool, just because we both enjoy driving so much!” You get the idea.

Entire companies are perniciously profiting from carbon offsets. Some don’t even follow through with their promises! Shameful.

And certain companies with laudable intentions are picking up on this:

In 2002 Responsible Travel became one of the first travel companies to offer customers the option of buying so-called carbon offsets to counter the planet-warming emissions generated by their airline flights.

But last month Responsible Travel canceled the program, saying that while it might help travelers feel virtuous, it was not helping to reduce global emissions. In fact, company officials said, it might even encourage some people to travel or consume more.

Examples of ecologically irresponsible behavior that irk me:

• Leaving the water on while washing dishes or brushing one’s teeth
• Turning the AC on but leaving the windows open
• Opening the fridge and keeping the door open for 5 minutes while deciding on what to eat
• Printing documents for no good reason
• Taking 20-minute showers
• Setting the AC at ludicrously low temperatures in the summer (or, in places like South Florida, almost all year long)
• Foregoing recycling because it’s time-consuming or inconvenient
• Foregoing reusing because new things are “nicer,” the latest trend, or debatably less work to just purchase new items
• Using the dishwasher, washer, or dryer when nearly empty

And wouldn’t you be much more likely to keep these habits up if you were offsetting your carbon footprint? And wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to offset and modify your absolutely changeable habits?

At the same time…

Back to Carbon Fund’s slogan – “reduce what you can, offset what you can’t” – it is completely possible, or even likely, that many people will choose to reduce, reuse, recycle, and offset.

But, really, how many individuals do you know who are that devoted? Who are already making significant efforts to greenify (it’s a word!) their lifestyle? Are you?

Greenifying ourselves will require changing what we:

• Eat (going vegan and buying locally)
• Wear (no more leather, suede, vinyl, and so on; giving up clothes, shoes, cosmetics, and more manufactured with toxic chemicals; using biodegradable sunscreen at the beach; etc.)
• Buy (opting for biodegradable cleaning products and paint, furniture, boycotting everything disposable and manufactured abroad, etc.)
• How we travel (bike, walk, jog, carpool, travel less, vacation closer to home, etc.)

And, naturally, many more aspects of our lives.

It won’t be easy – but isn’t it our only choice?

Read more about the downside of carbon offsets here and here.

P.S. Find other companies that offer carbon offsets here and here.

Peter and Amanda are WWOOF hosts in the UK

Do you enjoy organic farming and other activities that further sustainability?

There are organic farms all over the globe that you can volunteer at in exchange for free lodging and free meals, plus learning about organic farming and related lifestyles. Some farms have just a couple of hosts while others have entire families or small communities you would stay and hang out with.

World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) was founded in 1971 in the UK. The organizations involved with this project connect people who wish to volunteer, aka “WWOOFers” (awesome), with those who wish to receive help and impart their knowledge and skills to others. You can usually even do it if you don’t speak the local language! These hosts are cool folk, apparently.

WWOOFing in Australia with alpacas

Volunteers: What you need to know

On the WWOOF website you can find lists of organic farms, smallholdings, and gardeners. Some of them only request/accept help during certain months or seasons, while others are open all year long. Additionally, tasks vary per farm and, of course, geographical location.

You can visit the list of farms/hosts, choose the ones you’d like to visit, and contact them directly to make arrangements. WWOOFers usually live as part of the family, so the environment tends to be cozy and friendly (I assume, as I’ve never volunteered for WWOOF).

If you volunteer, you will not have to pay (and you won’t get paid) except for a “small fee” to WWOOF, which hosts must pay also. The fee helps maintain and grow the project.

The hosts

All hosts grow their food organically, are in conversion, or use environmentally friendly techniques on their farms and so on. Volunteers get hands-on experience growing organic crops and, where possible, by performing other tasks, such as feeding cattle.

There are WWOOF farms you can volunteer at in all five continents. The countries include the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, the Caribbean, Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, the European Union, Turkey, Israel, Cameroon, Uganda, South Africa, Australia, India, Japan, and others (keep checking the website).

Conclusion, so to speak

This sounds like a totally sweet deal for the adventurous, outdoorsy types who also want to make our world a better place (corny but true, huh? That’s okay.). Also, those of you free enough to get around, of course (the especially lucky among us!).

If you have experience with WWOOF, please share your thoughts and impressions! It sounds great, but there are always two sides to every story (at least).