Cycle the Garden Route, South Africa

Planet

Carbon Reduction

This journey has been carefully designed to minimize environmental impact and maximize benefits to local people in a meaningful way. The trip is mostly human powered as we travel by bike, eat locally, etc

Environment and Wildlife

All cycling routes on this trip take place on public roads or on specially allocated off-road cycling tracks on private land (for which a maintenance and conservation fee is paid). In keeping with our conservation policy, we do not cycle on land that isn't maintained for cycling or go off tar on land that forms part of national park land.
All the accommodation on this trip is fully accredited by Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa. This international accrediting body requires establishments to go through a rigorous 12-month audit of every aspect of their business cycle, including water and waste management and ethical procurement of supplies. As such, you can be assured that waste and water is managed to the highest international standards and supplies such as food and linen are ethically sourced from local companies.
All waste created during the journey itself (water bottles, food packaging, bicycle tubes and bombs) are all collected in the van and recycled responsibly.

People

Local Economy

This journey makes use of only accredited accommodation and tour operator suppliers to ensure optimum ethical practices for the people working on the journey. Under the rules of Fair Trade in Tourism, suppliers must pass an independent audit to prove that they comply with the following:

1 fair share - all participants involved in a tourism activity should get their fair share of the income, in direct proportion to their contribution to the activity;

2 fair say - all participants involved in a tourism activity should have the right and opportunity to participate in decisions that concern them;

3 respect - both host and visitor should have respect for human rights, culture and environment; this includes

safe working conditions and practices
protection of young workers
promoting gender equality
understanding and tolerance of socio-cultural norms
reducing consumption of water and energy, as well as reducing, reusing and recycling waste
conservation of biodiversity and natural resources
HIV/AIDS awareness

4 reliability - services delivered to tourists should be reliable and consistent; basic safety and security for both host and visitor should be ensured

5 transparency - tourism businesses should establish mechanisms of accountability; these include:

ownership of tourism businesses must be clearly defined
employees and other participants should be able to access information that concerns them
sharing of profits, benefits and losses must be transparent

6 sustainability - the tourism businesses should strive to be sustainable; this includes

increased knowledge through capacity-building
improved use of available resources through networking and partnerships
economic viability through responsible use of resources
reduction of leakage through local purchasing and employment
support to historically disadvantaged entrepreneurs

Thonga Beach Lodge through its parent company Seolo Africa has set up a transport and touring business where a local entrepreneur has been assisted to set up a company transporting staff and school children in the local area. They have also built direct business support links with their cleaning materials supplier and a local orphanage to reuse items from the lodge that aren't any longer fit for purpose at the 4 star level.

In terms of transport suppliers, the South African transport on this trip is carried out by a black-owned company, Hannival's Tours who we personally mentor and support with business development, administration and marketing.

As the travel agent, we recycle over 80% of our waste from our offices and make sure to pay our staff at least 50% more than the minimum wage for the travel industry. We also pay for housing for our lowest earning employee and are actively engaged in working with the homeless charity U-turn in our local area to end the cycles of trauma and dependency that lead to homelessness.