Fighting single-use plastic

What with ‘bags for life,’ coffee ‘keep’ cups and saying no to plastic straws, we are all becoming a lot more aware of the individual actions we can take in our daily lives to reduce unnecessary plastic waste.  At ETG we want to make it easier for our clients to keep their plastic ‘footprint’ to a minimum when on holiday too. 

 

So we’ve been working with our in-country partners to reduce and ultimately eliminate single use plastic water bottles from our tours.

 

Offer all our clients an aluminium water bottle on arrival
Provide a sustainable drinking water refill system in our vehicles
Encourage our preferred hotels to provide water refill stations

 

We estimate that using one of these reusable bottles will save an average of 56 single-use plastic bottles per person per two-week trip.  Or, to put it another way, the ETG community as a whole has the potential to save over 90,000 bottles a year!

We are not yet ‘live’ in all our destinations and, even where we have launched, we still have a way to go.  Logistically, it’s a big challenge and there are going to be times along the way when a plastic bottle is still your only drinking water option.  But we hope that our project will inspire, encourage and empower you to refuse plastic wherever you can. 

 

Our approach is ‘one bottle at a time.’ We have great ambitions for what you, we and our local partners can achieve together but we also regard every bottle saved along the way as a small but significant victory. Please let us know how you get on - and of course, all feedback and ideas welcome!

We aim to provide you with one reusable bottle per person per trip.  However, if you already have one you could take with you, that would be even better (many airports now have water stations where you can fill your bottle once you are through security).

 

Please be aware that if you are visiting more than one country we may be ‘live’ in one but not in the other.  In fact, we may only be operating in certain areas and on certain services within a country.  On your first transfer you may receive a reusable bottle but not have access to a refill station in the vehicle…this is very much a work in progress.

 

Some of our in-country partners are still working out the logistics and we are beginning to realise that there are as many different solutions as there are destinations. It’s also an ever-changing situation. Please see below for a country by country status update.

 

Where we don’t yet have an alternative, we will still offer drinking water in plastic bottles; increasingly however, hotels and restaurants offer water refills so we encourage you to take advantage of these where you can.

 

You might be interested in a campaign fast gaining momentum called Refill the World. https://refilltheworld.com/ Their maps show the location of drinking water refill stations in Asia - more are being added all the time and ETG is helping to expand the list.