Tuscany walking holiday, Italy

Planet

We choose our suppliers among the ones that sustain the environment. We suggest restaurants, enoteques and olive mills that serve and produce typical food and local products.

We support a local NGO, TAMAT, that is working on a project to develop sustainable mobility (H2power project) and we buy their gadgets to fund their activities. They are working, with other partners, on developing a demonstrator vehicle that is using as fuel a variable mixture of methane and hydrogen, that can be produced from renewable energy sources. They also organize awareness raising events for citizens and students about sustainable development and mobility and about the solution to preserve our environment. We supported the set up of the Foundation “Archeologia Arborea” in Città di Castello, which aims are to support biodiversity, the identification and multiplication of varieties of fruit trees that are disappearing because not as productive as the modern ones, protection of the landscape, support to sustainable development.

People

We give to our clients a list of farmers’ markets: true open air food shops from the producer to the consumer, vegetables organically grown and “zero kilometers” far. Buying and tasting their products is a way to support small local producers that otherwise risk to disappear. In Tuscany they are very popular. The best ones are called Mercatali, a project of Tuscany Region to support small farming and typical products: these markets are a place not only where to buy food but also where to deepen your knowledge about it, as the producers - farmers, craftsmen and breeders – are describing them to the consumers. In this tour, you can find one, Mercatale of Sovicille, nearby Siena (third Saturday of the month, Piazza Marconi, 9 am- 1 pm).

We give also to our clients some suggestions to visit local artisans that are producing with traditional techniques, as the old copper workshop in Montepulciano, the wrought iron and the pottery one in Pienza, and the terracotta in Montalcino. In Siena, too, you can find some of them that produce hand made jewels, pictorial decoration on various natural materials, handmade artistic candles, ceramics and furnishing accessories. They are all part of a project that promotes itineraries that bring the traveller through the artisan tradition of Tuscany.