Why we do it
My Green Trip finds its inspiration in a trip in Malaysia
When we were travelling, we once faced a river devastated by human wastes (plastic bags, glass bottles, tires, metals…). We felt mix feelings: sad, guilty, revolted and useless. We wanted to do something but the waste was so huge that it was impossible for just the two of us.
When, one week later, we saw in a National Park a monkey playing with a plastic bottle, we decided to do something. This time, it was manageable to collect it. We went back to the entrance and asked a plastic bag. In 20 minutes, we filled it in completely with waste and brought it back to the park ranger.
We felt useful and proud of this simple action and started to think of how it would be fantastic if all travellers would do the same. Travellers are usually visiting the same places and want to have a positive impact. So why not facilitating this?
This is how we came with the idea of My Green Trip: to reproduce our simple action at a larger scale.
Then, we started to talk to travelers and we realized we were many to think the same thing.
We found that the strong majority of travelers find places polluted with human waste during their vacation or trips. Most of the time it is a small or medium size, meaning that 1 to 3 persons could collect it.
Although the majority of people finds this sad and revolting, only a minority of travelers cleaned up what they could while most of them did not do anything about it. Why ?
Mainly for logistic reasons: they did not know in advance they will find it, they had no bags, they did not know where to put it after. However, we found that they are willing to spend some time during their vacation to do something for the planet.
Travelers have the motivation to clean but face logistics constraints.
This is why we are creating My Green Trip : to facilitate the logistics so that only motivation remains.
100
years for an aluminium can
450
years for a plastic bag
1000
years for a plastic bottle
infinite
for a glass bottle
number of years before decomposition
“We do not pretend to save the world, but we contribute
in our way”
In the end, My Green Trip contributes to the preservation of the environment in 2 ways.
We eliminate constantly small waste from natural places which protect the local ecosystem.
We increase the consciousness of ecological matters in touristic areas and in the home country of the traveler.