Leave No Trace Ireland and Sustainable Travel
Leave No Trace Ireland as an organisation has grown a lot since we began in 2006 – especially in the last seven years!
As we’ve grown, we’ve been invited to be part of wider European projects. These invitations to collaborate on an international level provide us with opportunities to spread our ethos further than ever before.
For the last three years Dr. Noel Doyle has been the coordinator of award-winning SEE Project. This project has been a collaboration with 10 partner organisations and over 100 stakeholders form all across Europe.
All organisations shared their specialist knowledge and perspectives on outdoor education within their countries. From this research, 5 reports were written and a toolkit was built for the teaching of responsible outdoor recreation to those who teach outdoor sports!
For much of the work on this project, and all our other Europe-wide projects, online meetings were the foundation – and allowed such work to continue despite the restrictions that COVID placed on our lives for those few years.
As an environmental charity, not having to travel thousands of miles every time we want to discuss a topic has been really important to keep our environmental impact low.
However, sometimes working in person is necessary to trial different projects, field test outdoor practices, conduct on-site assessments, collaborate with local communities to understand and address the specific challenges, and foster greater collaboration between European countries.
Sustainable Travel
While it would certainly be an inspiring story, we have not been able to travel to our international conferences under purely human power!
When international travel is deemed necessary, we explore ways to minimise the carbon footprint; such as choosing sustainable transportation options, offsetting emissions, and combining multiple meetings into a single trip.
For all of our Erasmus projects, sustainability has been a key issue for us. We’ve worked to reduce the carbon impacts by travelling overland using busses, ferries, carpooling, camping etc. Last November (2023), Dr. Noel Doyle traveled overland from Westport to Munich with Sport NI and Tollymore National Outdoor Centre. The group took two ferries, crossed five countries, and drove over 2000km to arrive in Munich for the three day SEE Project Symposium.
And this is just one example – many of The SEE Project Partners have taken alternative travel options throughout the years of this and other projects, to reduce their carbon footprints.
“Leave No Trace and our European project partners do comprehensive carbon calculations of all travel and accommodation for these trips – and so when overland travel isn’t feasible, this carbon calculation reflects that.” – Dr. Noel Doyle
We then make donations to environmental carbon offsetting! For instance, the partners of the SEE project adopted areas in Galway for bog restoration and the international symposium held in Munich specifically incorporated a fee to offset the carbon cost of the event. This donation is being made to local nature restoration initiatives in Germany.
Our specific method of carbon calculation was developed as part of The SEE Project, and allowed us to really discuss the topic of how we calculate carbon, and how we can incorporate this into all of our future travel.
It has been so rewarding to be part of the projects we have contributed to so far, and we cannot wait to see what future collaborations will come from the work we do. And finding ways to travel as sustainably as we can will always be a key part!
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The images in this post are all from the SEE Project Symposium 2023. Thank you to all our Partners for documenting the symposium so well!
