Environmentally friendly tours - what can we do?

Blog 9 Apr 2015

With the 45th anniversary of Earth Day taking place on the 22nd of April, it seems like a nice time to review the impact that we leave on the environment and the measures that we can take to minimise that impact through conducting environmentally friendly tours.

In many ways it has never been easier to minimise our impact from a personal level; recycling bins are easy to reach, awareness of energy usage and its impact is at an all-time high and the option to buy recycled/less chemically hazardous materials and products is exceedingly easy.

However, just because we do our best at home does not mean we can forget our responsibility to the environment in our work/professional lives either. The person that recycles their packaging at home may just throw it away in the bin when at work or the lights or heating may be left on overnight for example.

This is why we at Timberbush Tours are doing our best to try and minimise our impact on the environment and provide environmentally friendly tours. Our day trips from Edinburgh and Glasgow specialise in showing off the beauty that is Scotland to our customers and we want to ensure that it remains just as beautiful for generations to come. It’s our bread and butter at the end of the day after all!

We do this in three ways…

Firstly; in our offices we recycle as many goods as possible, we only work with suppliers that have environmental policies that we agree with and we ensure that we don’t use any energy that we don’t need to.

Secondly; our vehicles are cleaned by hand and we do not use detergents or aerosols to do so. We also ensure that our vehicles are rarely idle by avoiding traffic and taking routes that we know that won’t be busy – which works for the customer (more to see and do) and the environment (less waste).

Thirdly, we are proud to support Trees for Life, a Scottish conservation charity dedicated to the regeneration and restoration of the Caledonian Forest in the Highlands of Scotland. They are working to build the forest to its former glory whilst reintroducing some of the native wildlife that has disappeared from these shores over the years.

The behaviour of our customers though is just as important. We clearly state on each tour that we do not want to make an impact on the sites that we visit, they should be making an impact on us! We have found though that once our customers have taken a day trip on one of our environmentally friendly tours and have seen the stunning scenery of Scotland, such as the Trossachs or Glencoe, we don’t have much bother in convincing people to adhere to this philosophy.

The Highlands are our back garden, we at Timberbush Tours hope to keep it that way for as long as possible and we hope you will help us in that job too!