Yes, we travel and fly a lot... But that doesn't mean we don't care about sustainability, people and the environment. On the contrary. I even believe that precisely because we have seen so much beauty (and misery) in the world, we have come to care more about the world and people from all levels of society. Traveling does a lot for a person, much more than you would initially expect. I even wrote an inspiring article about this earlier:
Read: Personal development | 7 ways traveling makes you grow.
Traveling comes with a price
But all the traveling comes with a price. We emit a relatively large amount of CO2 with our travel behavior, which is of course not good. We are very aware of this and that is why we have taken various steps in recent years to compensate for our travel behavior. For example, through our climate-neutral bunq bank, where we include our Prepaid Credit Card that we use worldwide. We are connected to a sustainable program through this bank and invest part of our turnover every month in planting trees. We have now planted 1108 trees in Kenya and Madagascar, among others. However, that's not all.
In this message we want to give you more insight into what we do behind the scenes for a better world...
Bunq bank plants 9 million trees
This year, together with the Bunq community, we have planted more than 4 million mangrove trees in both Kenya as a Madagascar with partner Eden Reforestation Projects. That brings the total to no less than 9 million planted trees, or 115 million kg of CO2 compensation!
Wereldreizigers.nl financed a total of 1108 trees, from which we received a nice certificate at the beginning of 2023.
More than just Co2 compensation
With every tree we plant, we not only take a step closer to becoming CO2-free, we also help the local population who work on the plantations to drastically improve their quality of life.
At the Madagascar site alone, we have helped generate over 2000 days of full-time work per month. This gives the local population the opportunity to rebuild their local economy.
How we try to make a difference
But that's not all. Wereldreizigers.nl does even more for a better world. Below is a summary of some of our deliberate, climate-neutral choices over the past few years.
- Immediately at the start of this website, it was decided to go as CO2 neutral as possible, starting with choosing one Co2 neutral bank (bunq).
- Of every euro we have earned or spent since then, Bunq's collaboration with Eden Reforestation Projects, a small part of the turnover invested in trees.
- We chose a CO2 neutral web server to host the website. This server runs entirely on green energy from the Netherlands.
- We bought through the action of Teamtrees.org another two times 100 trees to compensate for air travel.
- We work as much as possible on energy-efficient screens, laptops and desktop PCs.
- Our house, practically our office, is fully supplied with green energy. We have solar panels and even more importantly: three heavy household batteries are linked to the solar panels so that we can store excess energy for the evening and dark days. The energy consumption of the Wereldreizigers.nl This effectively brings the office to 0. Climate neutral!
- Almost our entire 'office' is furnished with items that we give a second chance. Almost everything you see is second hand and/or refurbished, from lamp to chair to screen.
- When we buy new 'travel gadgets', we look closely at the impact the product has on the environment. So we purposefully bought one Noise canceling headphones from Sony which is made entirely of 100% recycled car parts and we only bought backpacks made from 100% recycled plastic. These include the Peak Design 20L Daypack and the sustainable GOT BAG which is 100% made from plastic waste from the sea!
- Where possible, we promote as many ecological destinations and accommodations as possible on our website.
- Our 4×4 camper is equipped with extra solar panels and batteries so that we never have to use the power cable for energy again. We even heat our water with this for showering! We generate all the energy that we use while traveling with the camper via the solar panels and store it in our batteries.
- Our promotional items such as bags and business cards are made from recycled and unbleached cotton or paper.
Also read: Responsible travel, how do you do that? | 7x sustainable tips
But, it can always be better…
In the coming year we will investigate whether there are other options to reduce our CO2 impact. For example, we want to fly less and travel more Europe start traveling by train – although that still seems like a big challenge – especially with our current business partners.
We also drive a camper in which we fill up with fossil fuel. We still have a dream that we want to build a new (fully electric) camper ourselves. Unfortunately, given the prices of these very expensive vans, we cannot afford that at the moment, but we are closely monitoring the development.
In short, we are far from done with change. Do you want to change with us or do you want to collaborate? You know where to find us!
Also read: Tips for a plastic-free trip | 9x sustainable must-have luggage items
Photo credits: © Wereldreizigers.nl, Bunq and Eden Reforestation Projects
