Sustainable live, travel and work: blogs and contributions of WorldSupporters - Bundle
Blogs and contributions of WorldSupporters on sustainable living and working
5 easy things you can do right now to help better your environment
In countries like the Netherlands we are lucky to have efficient systems for processing and recycling trash. Many homes have efficient heating systems that limit the amount of resources we use when we're at home. All passenger trains are powered by stored wind energy and electric vehicles are on the rise in 2019. Still, we impact our environment and its health every day and while we can't prevent it, we can certainly take steps to limit the damage we're doing.
If you want to help better the environment but you don't know how you can start contributing, this list is a good place to start.
You can help the environment by doing these 5 simple things, and on the plus side, your wallet will thank you later!
1. Limit your water usage
People who have traveled to countries where water is a limited resource will all tell you that, upon returning to their home country, started taking shorter showers. Our world's population is increasing and so is our usage of water. Don't leave the tap running when brushing your teeth. Wet a towel and wash your face with that instead of with tap water. By taking shorter showers you save yourself some money at the end of the month too!
Watch: "Take shorter showers"
2. Turn the lights off in the rooms you're not in
Easy to do, hard to remember. By turning the lights off in rooms you're not in, you're saving yourself some unnecessary power usage. Sure, leaving that light on in the bathroom once or twice isn't that bad... But imagine what it adds up to over the course of a whole year. You can even invest in sensors so you won't have to hit the switch every time.
Watch: "3 Ways to Turn Off the Lights (Without getting out of bed.)"
3. Use less paper
Did you know that around 40% of the world's timber is used for the production of paper? You do now! The production of all this paper endangers forests and natural habitats. So before you print that ticket for your concert, boat ride or your curriculum vitae for a job interview, ask yourself "Do I really need to print this?"
Watch: "Save Paper to Save Forests"
4. Buy reusable products
Try to limit the amount of disposable products you buy. Get yourself a refillable water bottle or reusable tupperware, and buy a quality grocery bag instead of the plastic disposable ones.
5. Wear a sweater
Especially in winter, it can be quite cold outside. We're humans and we're inclined to turn up the heating when we want to warm ourselves up. Instead, try putting on a warm sweater and those nice-looking winter socks with the funny print on them that you got for your birthday three years ago. By dressing up warm you'll save yourself heating costs at the end of the year and, over time, you'll get used to it!
Watch: "National Sweater Day"
Doughnut Economics - sustainable development
Short summary of dougnut economics
"...Meet the needs of all within the means of the planet" - Kate Raworth
Doughnut economics offers an alternative to holding on to the potentially damaging belief of a forever-growing economy. It takes into account planetary bounderies, for example, by acknowledging that if we use too much freshwater, it dries up the source which may damage the ecosystem and be unusable after. On the other hand, it also acknowledges the needs of people, such as having a reliable availability of an acceptable quantity and quality of water. The aim of donought economics is to find a balance between the needs of people and the limits of the planet, ensuring that both can strive in the long-term. One way to contribute to the goals of dougnut economics is to invest in renewable sources of energy.
For more information: A healthy economy should be designed to thrive, not grow | Kate Raworth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhcrbcg8HBw
Sustainability and Social Impact
Sustainability
Looking back at 2017, focussing on the positive. I have been asked to talk, and sometimes even as a Keynote Speaker on Conferences.
My talks are about Sustainability (which is the key of Social Impact) and about Social Impact. I did some research and taught myself all about Sustainability. It was a journey and I would like to share that with you in parts. Why am I thinking about that now? Because one of our interns, who was with us 2 years ago, visited us all the way from Belgium to the Philippines. She graduated Tourism and decided because of her Internship with World Experience Philippines to study more about Sustainability.
Today she helped me, what is Sustainability and what are the Measurement Tools? For me Sustainability is if you like to make the world a better place and you dont only think about yourself. The official description is: it has to do with lagom (yes the "trendy" word from Sweden) balance, to sustain the world that generaties after us, who will follow us, have gain. Wow. So how do we do that? I am studying again, check out: The Feeling Responsible Platform of Koning Aap, Joker Reizen, check the trends on the newsletter of Travel360. I was inspired today. I wish you too.
What is Social Impact?
‘A significant, positive change that addresses a pressing social challenge.Having a social impact is the result of a deliberate set of activities with a goal around this definition.’(Center for Social Impact, University of Michigan, n.d.)
Social impact can be defined by the net results of the effects of activities on a community and the well-being of individuals and families. Sustainability is key in reaching social impact. The aim is to create positive, meaningful and long-term change for the benefit of the community.
We focussed on the following log frame: input – output – outcome – impact. Via activities, community work for example, you inject input which causes direct output. The outcome is the longer-term effect or change in broader context which hopefully turns into social impact; the sustainable effect or change on the community.
Smokey Tours and Social Impact. When we started doing projects in the slums and giving donations, our goal as to give all to the community. We would give all our income to the Foundation active in the Slum, so it could be directly put in projects. At one point we decided to go on with our tours in a professional way. Thus we had income, expenses, payment of tour leaders, transportation, meetings, a bookkeeper, business registration and “profit”. At that point, also due to transferring to another area where we did our Slum Tour, we started with Quarterly Events together with Crest. The goal was to organize an event with an educational twist, so all people would learn and most people on our route would benefit of the tour.
In the past we have organized: giving out Raincoats to children, giving out Christmas packages, Disaster training, Haircuts, Nutritional Education, Tooth brushing events, a Faucet was built in the Daycare in Happy Land.
More and more we feel like that it is good that the community is trained and organized, so they can be empowered and get more easily a job. We started in Happy Land with the Buddy system. We had 4 extra buddies from the community, as paid tour leaders in training at the back of the tour. After 2 months pilot, we had to wait too long for the buddies, they were late. They were fighting over schedules, and we decided, together with them to stop. Due to our many visits to Happy Land and our close working relationship with Crest, we discovered there was a need for a Basic Health Center. Setting it up, took a lot of time. Last moment the community has backed out and we decided due to the War on Drugs and relocation of the community to other areas to transfer our Slum Tour to Baseco with the help of Crest.
In 2017 we started with Quarterly Events, and more and more the wish of the community came forward to open a Health Center in Baseco. The local Health workers were already trained, but out of a job! It was too good to be true. We found a place, we helped 737 people in our pilot time. The Health Workers were trained by the hospital and trained by MCC of the Netherlands. We wanted more information and data of the needs of the people in Baseco in Aplaya, in the poorest area in Baseco. After 6 months, we became more and more like a Pharmacy. So we are back on track helping malnourished children (Vitameal), pregnant mothers with vitamins and education. As well as Holiday English classes, by one of our tour leaders. That is real empowerment.
We are in the middle of setting up projects sponsored by one of our former guests. With an extra new partner, besides Crest, PRRC, the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission. Our focus has always been, and will always be, to help the people, who want to be helped and to empower people with knowledge and training.
During our tours, our guests are shown the other side of Manila, and we are so thank full of so many donations in cash and in kind. Our key focus is still that we can connect organizations and groups to the Baseco Community and we can do projects together, we had Rotary events, Events with a cruise line, Food packages of individuals, Art classes, Janice slipper and dancing event. Francis Anderson School supplies bag event, Typhoon relief.
A special thanks to: JoHo, Paswerk, Co van der Hoek, Marrigje Pieters, Jenneke, Harry en Eldrid, Fenna, Yvonne S.E van Eck- Remmers van de Diaken Remonstrantse Gemeente Den Haag, Martina Locher, Lucylle, Zoe, Tessa Diamse, Yew Chie, Burn, Mowen, Jos Pepping, Leon Harbers, Daniel Frances. And all the people who are not mentioned and/or don’t want to be mentioned.
Summary of the Promise of Sustainable Happiness
Short Summary of the Promise of Sustainable Happiness
The article suggests that, despite several barriers withholding people to increase their well-being, less happy people can successfully strive to be happier by learning a variety of effortful strategies and practicing these with determination and commitment. They use the sustainable happiness model (by Lyubomirsky, Sheldon and Schkade, 2005) as theoretical framework. According to the model, three factors contribute to an individual’s happiness level:
The set point
Life circumstances
Intentional activities/effortful acts that are episodic and naturally variable
The journey to happiness has always and still is of great interest, there is empirical evidence that it even leads to positive life outcomes such as a higher income and stronger relationships. The question, however, is whether people can actually attain a level of sustainable happiness.
To answer this question, we first we look at what happy and unhappy people are like:
The first thing that comes to mind is the difference between their ‘objective’ circumstances that could cause a difference in their level of happiness. Some examples include: marital status, age, sex, culture, income etc. It is shown, however, that these factors do not explain the variation in people’s level of well-being.
The article proposes that happiness and unhappiness is due to the subjective experience and construal of the world by people. They interpret their environment differently, leading the authors to explore an individual thoughts, behaviors and motivations. Happier people see the world in a more positive, and thus happiness-promoting, way. Research suggests that happy people are this way because of multiple adaptive strategies:
Construal
Research that involved having happy and unhappy people reflect on similar hypothetical situations / actual life events, revealed that happy people view these events as more pleasant, while unhappy people view these same events as unfavourable..
Social comparison
Findings suggest that people that are happy are less sensitive to feedback about another person or his or her performance (favourable and unfavourable feedback). When performing ‘better’ on a task, all participants became more confident about their skills; however when the other was better, happy people were unaffected while unhappy people were, negatively. Unhappy people seem to feel positive emotions when a peer has done worse than them, even if they both got negative feedback. When they got positive feedback but performed at a lower level than a peer, they felt negative emotions. This was the case in both individual and group settings.
Decision-making
When happy people make life-altering decisions, they tend to be satisfied with their possible options, and only express negative emotions when their sense of self is threatened. Conversely, unhappy people were generally unhappy withthe options offered to them. Happy and unhappy people also differ in how they make decisions in the face of many options. Research suggests that happy individuals are relatively more likely to be satisfied with a solution that is "good enough," while unhappy people tend to maximise the benefits of their decisions and attempt
.....read more Travelling sustainably and ethically: tips & tricks
Hey everyone,
Today I want to talk about travelling sustainably and ethically, since I think these are two of the most important things if you want to keep travelling and enjoying cultures/natures.
So much can be learnt through travelling. It is meaningful and wonderful and gives us the opportunity to explore other ways of thinking, other cultures, other perspectives on things and not to mention a great variety of beautiful ecosystems. It is easy to assume that the way we do things here is the right way, that how we live, is how it should be, but travelling can totally mess this idea up, in a good way :). However, tourism can also put great stress on other cultures and ecosystems. Whole societies can change and disappear if tourism is performed in an unsustainable way. In this day and age in which travelling is so popular, easy and cheap, it is therefore very important to travel sustainably to sustain a place and its character.
So what makes travelling sustainable? Many ideas and opinions exist about this, but I think it comes down to focussing on these things: respect, ethics, eco-tourism. Again, these terms can be interpreted in multiple ways of course haha.
Respect is one of the main things if you want to be accepted into a culture, but also preserve a culture. Respect begins with researching the country you're visiting. This means looking into the culture, the rules, the unwritten rules and sometimes even the language if you're up for it. Getting to know a culture before you see it (by reading, watching movies/documentaries, researching the internet) can already increase your respect for it. Even though you might already think you are respectful, understanding exactly what and why will help you to act on it even better! And, it's also great fun to know so much about a culture. You can talk to local people about it, or explain things to other tourists which in turn helps them to travel more sustainably as well.
Being respectful and being ethical has a lot in common. However, being ethical to me means that you are aware of what you do and how you do it, and that you really try to limit any negative impact you can have on cultures/environments. This means that for everything you decide to do, you do some research on how, why, where and by whom. So if you want to visit a local village for example, how is the trip conducted, what are the real reasons behind the trip (making money or supporting the local industry?), where are you going (what kind of village is it? Are they real local places, or are they places set up for tourism and making money?) and who is conducting the tour (is it local, what do they spend the profit on? etc). Of course, some of these things are really difficult to find out, but by trying to dig deeper than just booking the first cheap option, you might really have a positive impact on local cultures and help in preserving them. The same can be important for animal/wildlife shelters.
Ecotourism, a term defined by the World Conservation Union as "Environmentally responsible travel to natural areas, in order to enjoy and appreciate nature (and accompanying cultural features, both past and present) that promote conservation, have a low visitor impact and provide for beneficially active socio-economic involvement of local peoples." As you can read In ecotourism a big part of the money made by tourism is usually put into conservation practices, like tree planting, preserving lands or helping animals. This goes hand-in-hand with cultural conservation. It's all about minimising your impact on the environment and being aware of what you can do (through tourism) to preserve the country you're visiting. Again, you can do research on the impacts of certain things you want to do. You can also find out which place you should and shouldn't visit by reading reviews for example. For example in Thailand, elephant riding can be a very popular activity for tourists, but it is terrible for the elephants. If you do want to see an elephant though, or maybe even be super close to one, you can visit an animal/elephant shelter where the elephants live that were rescued from these terrible circumstances. Often, you can also volunteer at these places which helps them in taking care of the animals and sheltering more animals.
If you want to know more about eco-tourism, check out this page for example: https://ecotourism.org/news/
Well, I think it's all about pre-reading, which is also a fun way to prepare for your travels. Learning about a country can help you in making sustainable decicions. Travel in a local way, eat in a local way and sleep locally, this can all help in preserving nature, food and whole cultures. If you have more suggestions, let me know! Good luck with planning your sustainable travels :).
Cheers,
Hannah
Tourism Tiger's Sustaining Tourism
Sustaining Tourism is a new word for me, and it caught my attention. Hopefully yours as well. From the TourismTiger website.
Sustaining Tourism compares responsible tourism to sustainable tourism, yet asserts that since “the word sustainability is often overused and not understood, responsible tourism has been adopted as a term used by [the] industry.” In general, tourism practices that implement one or more of the following can be considered responsible tourism:
- Minimize negative social, economic, and environmental impacts
- Generate greater economic benefits for local people and enhance the well-being of host communities
- Improve working conditions and access to the industry
- Involve local people in decisions that affect their lives and life chances
- Make positive contributions to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage embracing diversity
- Provide more enjoyable experiences for tourists through meaningful connections with local people and a greater understanding of local cultural, social, and environmental issues
- Provide access for physically challenged people
- Be culturally sensitive, encourage respect between tourists and hosts, and build local pride and confidence
Efforts to be more responsible in the tourism industry are cropping up all over. Tourism, as an ever-growing industry, calls for innovation, not only for the sake of unique experiences but also to combat overtourism. A classic case of supply and demand, decisions to go green are happening as a result of the consumer’s desires. As Poppy Johnston from The Fifth Estate writes, “the unthinking tourist might be a thing of the past if people […] continue to drive change.” Today, travelers are much more socially and environmentally aware than in the past and have begun to more deeply consider the effects that tourism has on the environment, culture, and economy of today’s societies.
I like it also, when you read something and it summarizes how you can take part of it, check it out:
WHAT ARE SOME STEPS THAT YOU CAN TAKE RIGHT NOW?
- Look at ways you can involve your community. Hire locals to work as tour guides or assistants, invite locals to share a bit of their heritage with your guests, support local establishments by recommending them.
- Implement a no-trace program. Restrict what guests are allowed to bring on tours, be adamant that they stay on marked trails, recycle everything that you can, start a compost pile.
- Be transparent with your company’s values. Talk to your guests about what you stand for, give your guests a detailed account of where their money goes.
Sustainability: main content and contributions - Bundle
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