Small things make a Big Eco-Difference

Dealing in eco-tourism we feel the responsibility to show our clients just where we are in protecting the environment. We feel priviledged to having student travel groups and family vacations which we feel we can hopefully make a lasting impact on them. The idea is that they take some of the ideas and information they learn down here and pass it on to their family and friends back home. Most of our clients come from the US which is home to myself (Proud to be an American) but is also an area that has developed a style of living that mother Earth might not be ready for. This is the fault of nobody and society has left US citizens victims from a young age of how to live on this planet. We hope that with a few simple practices on our tours that our groups will go back and not completely change their style of living but just do small simple things that make a big difference. I will be honest I did not pay much attention to the environment, recycling, and things of such until I moved down to Costa Rica 9 years ago where I began doing Costa Rica Vacations and student travel groups and being in nature 24-7 that I realized we are here to live with Earth as a part of it and not to destroy it. Take a look at some of these stats and see that little things can make a big difference:

-The average home on Earth has 123 items in their home and the number of items in the average US home is 5,000.

- Coffee drinkers use about a 1/3 of the tap water in most American Homes. If every coffee drinker cut back on making one cup less in the morning over the course of a year this would save enough water to give 2 gallons of water to 1.2billion people on the planet who dont have water.

- (I like this one since a lot of teachers have been fired this year) Schools waste $1.5 billion in wasted heated and A/C per year. If this was controlled by the teachers it would be enough to hire 30,000 more teachers for one year of classes.

- If everyone decided to only use e-tickets for airplane tickets the airline industry could save as much as $3 billion dollars annually by eliminating paper tickets all together. With paper saved you would have enough to provide boarding passes for all of India.

The list goes on of simple steps that can be taken to make a big difference. The key word here that it is SIMPLE.