SUSTAINABILITY AND STEWARDSHIP

At the Road Less Traveled we are striving to create a more equitable and sustainable world. Increasing awareness of climate change, teaching sustainability and stewardship skills, and supporting environmental justice movements are central to our programming. 

We travel to some of the world’s most beautiful and remote places and recognize that our reliance on and use of these places has an impact. Because of this, we have a responsibility to minimize our impact and help preserve these places for future generations. Learning how to reduce their impact on the environment is an important part of the personal growth of our travelers. We instill and model in our travelers deep respect for the world around them and teach them how to care for and nurture the environment, both on the road and at home.  We do so throughout each trip by teaching and implementing the Leave No Trace Principles (LNT).  By practicing over the course of their trip with RLT, we believe that the participants will be equipped with the tools to practice LNT at home, school and in their travels in the future. 

We work to have our participants understand the interconnectedness of our world and our actions on our programs. For instance, while participating in environmental service work, our leaders ask our participants why the work we are participating in is needed at all. We believe that when we understand the global and local impact of our work, we can use those insights to inform our future decisions. Many of our service projects involve a sustainability or stewardship lens- invasive species removal, trail maintenance, beach clean ups, garden infrastructure design, data collection, to name a few…

We understand there is still more we can be doing, and our team spends time over the offseason reviewing our own impact, and what strategies and processes we can put in place to minimise our footprint and protect our incredible planet.

We love hearing about the work our participants are up to over the course of the year and the ways they are connecting stewardship, sustainability and service in their home communities. If you know of someone or are someone who recently went on an RLT trip who is doing sustainability work at home, please share their info with us so we can highlight their work in our blog! 

We would love to hear from you! Please reach out to: kacy@theroadlesstraveled.com.