Welcome to our 100% green travel blog! Read our articles to make greener travel choices for a better future!

We are – Denis and I – passionate lovers of travel, nature and discovery. Writing this blog doesn’t stem from a recent desire, it took us a while to make it happen. What has changed in the meantime? Well, a trip to Vietnam has particularly left its mark on us and that led us to create The GreenPick.

We had decided to leave with our bikes and cross the country this way. We were both dazzled by the country and also very shocked by the way the tourism has developed there. This was a turning point for us and we decided to act and when the idea of The GreenPick was born. We both activate within the private sector, without any connection whatsoever to environmental protection. We don’t necessarily consider ourselves environmentalists but we recognize that humanity needs to act and that needs to happen quickly.

Magic is in the GreenPick

As a child, I would spend hours observing the world and asking myself so many questions about the nature of things. This curiosity has probably augmented my innate taste for science, although I haven’t chosen it as a career path, and that partly explains what drives me to write this blog. This life around us, present in almost all the individual elements of our wonderful planet, fascinates me. Isn’t is absolutely incredible to realize that what creates us, the plants and the animals, are just 4 atoms themselves present in the air, the water and in all other inorganic matter? How not to believe in the power and the beauty of life when we realize that we, human beings, are incapable of replicating what the planet has created?

Therefore we must preserve it and we have the means to do so today, we can perpetuate our species beyond imagination and live in harmony with Mother Nature. We are not saying to stop conducting our lives the way we are doing it now, to consume or to produce less, but to do all of this in a better manner. Do you want to offer your children a planet whose oceans aren’t solely filled with medusas, where animals won’t reside only inside cages and aquariums, a world where they will recognize the taste of a fruit that has ripened in the sun, where they will relax in the shadow of a tree while listening to the birds chanting, where they will be able to breathe without wearing a mask and swim in the rivers, where they will be able to be as amazed as we are, a world where life is synonymous with magic and grandeur? Then today is what we want tomorrow to become.

But we have to start reacting, for our planet and above all, for us…

Thailand – Ko Phi Phi Don beach

Throughout our travels, we have seen unspeakable things, ranging from the way tourism institutions manage historical centers to the manner in which state institutions manage the status of coral reefs or their own beach. Going for a swim and finding a syringe in the water is not what can be qualified as an agreeable experience. Visiting a temple or another monument and having to walk on waste disgusts us. Diving to see only dead corals, leading to a flagrant lack of sea life gives us zero desire to repeat the experience.

Staying in a hotel and discovering the way wastewaters are treated, meaning simply thrown in the river nearby where kids wash themselves and women do laundry, is revolting. You have the right to stay in locations that correspond to your wishes. To be reassured that during your holidays you and your loved ones bathe in clean water, that you stay in a hotel that respects the environment and that you can, through your choices, help the local economies plan their tourism industry in the longer term. Local economies investing in preserving what they have and what ultimately makes us visit their countries, that is our challenge.

“Mummy, why don’t we see animals in the wild ?”

International tourism generates more than 1 trillion $ annually, and represents employment for 1 in 11 people. Therefore although it seems very difficult for us, the consumers, to control the way in which companies make the products we buy, or to prevent the intensive exploitation of natural resources through the tourism industry, we can influence the development of the tourism industry. The majority of people with whom we talk about ecology or sustainable development, tell us that it is not their actions that will stop the inevitable from happening, that sorting or buying bio chicken will not prevent the ice melts and the shale gas to be exploited.

We have thought about it for a long time as we feel we are pawns on a chess board where we do not control the game. But it turns out that by targeting the tourism industry, we can act and send a signal to governments. Assessing tourism industries on their green policy, assisting people in choosing the manner in which they want to travel, helping you become responsible tourists supporting your planet as well as local economies – this is our goal and The GreenPick’s purpose. To give you a helping hand in making the right choice, for you, for your children and for humanity overall.

Translation & Copy Editing by Liana Marinoiu

Cet article est disponible en Français (French)