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These days ‘responsible travel' and ‘Sustainability' are hot topics. To us responsible travel is not about donating large sums of money to charity (at least not without thoroughly researching the long-term intentions or effects of the charity). We believe responsible travel is about taking time to think about how our actions can benefit or how they impact the people, communities, economies, environments and eco-systems we visit, and then use this to make a difference (or sometimes more appropriately - how we can NOT make a difference). We are constantly considering our actions and how we and the people who travel with us can improve our impact on the places we visit.
Here are just some of the ways that we ‘make a difference’:
Community
Social integration with the local people is a central part of our trips. Simply travelling by bike is a great start – a great way for our bikers and local people to meet and start a conversation. We buy locally grown and produced food as much as possible; we support local businesses by staying in locally owned guesthouses, eating in local restaurants and taking our bikers to local operations and parks. For every trip we take through this area we make a donation to the local mountain bike club and local track development projects to assist with track care and maintenance.
Environment
We educate our bikers about the effects of buying products that come from endangered species, or products that are destructive to wildlife or the environment (feeding some of the New Zealand wildlife can cause a lot of problems for example). Waste/rubbish management – when we travel we should treat our surrounding as we would treat our home (or better!). We do our best to avoid ‘single use packaging’ only using reusable or recyclable packaging. We re use what can be reused, recycle what can be recycled, and limit what needs to go into landfill as much as possible.
We have an environmentally conscious office – To avoid paper waste we aim to use as much computer technology as possible in our office. And when we do print we use paper from recycled sources! For every person who flies to join our trips we donate 10 trees to a local reforestation project. We are active members of New Zealand Forest and Bird, and Greenpeace.
We invite every traveller who books a holiday via us to send in a review. Because we don't run the holidays they're completely independent and unedited... remember to read between the lines though, as two people on the same holiday can have different views!
