Hi everyone! As our blog comes to a close, we thought we’d post some closing thoughts from both of us (Joanna and Emily). I’ll (Joanna) be taking this first post, while Emily will post a little later on in the week.
COVID: Uncharted waters
When Emily and I first decided to do up a blog on environmental pollution in the tourism industry, we were motivated by the way the COVID-19 seemed to be reversing all the negative effects of tourism. Yet, what were the negative effects of tourism? Personally, I wasn’t equipped with much knowledge apart from stuff I learnt in secondary school – stuff about people throwing rubbish at tourist sites or trampling on nature. I had no idea about the more technical, scientific parts about environmental pollution in the field of tourism.
But in we dived, trying to relate content from our Environmental Pollution module to tourism. In this blog, we attempted to make the module come alive in an understandable way for others – and for ourselves too.
Complexities and technicalities
The more we posted, the more we found out about environmental pollution – and the more I realized how complex environmental pollution truly was (is). It was no longer just tourists trampling on grass; it was a whole host of different pollution sources and pollution types within the tourism industry. From aquatic pollution to air pollution, to soil pollution and even light and noise pollution, I came to realize how pollutive an industry tourism is.
More than that, though, I also realized the complexities within each type of pollution (but they definitely do not work in silos, thus adding further to the complexity). For instance, aquatic pollution consists of several forms – eutrophication, heavy metal pollution, plastic pollution – instead of being simply ‘aquatic pollution’. In fact, the process of how each form of pollution works is also complex – just think of how plastics break down into microplastics, or how air pollution exerts an influence on how we think! Worse still, different types of pollution can compound and affect each other – for example, soil pollution with heavy metals can then be mobilised into water bodies, adding to aquatic pollution.
Hope for the future
Yet, even as I encountered mounds of negative news about tourism and its impact on the environment – and us humans – I was also heartened by the various innovative and creative methods to ameliorate pollution in the future.
From small-scale solutions like planting hyperaccumulator plants in hotels or using air pollution to create ink for perhaps street graffiti (I especially liked this one), to medium-scale solutions like having people clean up after themselves on a holiday, opening airline cafes to deal with wanderlust, or sending tourist trash back to their owners, to large-scale changes like opening up a new subtype of tourism of visiting places untainted by light pollution or even entire island closures for ecosystem recovery… I was amazed at the host of solutions available for us to tap on if we really had the determination to do so.
It can start with us
Perhaps the question, then, is, “What can I do?” now that the blog has fleshed out so many issues and possible solutions – and one answer that I realized is this: we can vote with our dollars, no matter how much we have. There is no better way of changing tourist operators’ minds than to guide them with our consumption choices – if we all shift towards having a preference for ‘greener’ establishments, market forces would force them to make the necessary changes to accommodate us.
On top of more conscious spending and holidaying, we can also walk the talk – when we feel like travelling, we can ask ourselves if it’s on a whim or if we truly want a getaway; or, for something less drastic, we could choose to take the public transport in our holiday destination instead of hiring a private car. In our hotels, we could make the effort to reuse our bath towels and bedsheets too.
I hope you’ve had as much fun reading this blog as I’ve had writing it – it certainly made me learn a lot about the world around me, and in a mix of guilt about the present and the wish to do something for a better future, I’ve come to realize that we all have the agency to do something, no matter how small or insignificant. The truth of the matter is: nothing is truly ever insignificant in the fight against environmental pollution. Even if it might seem gloomy now, I believe our planet can bloom again.
Remember, the earth we live on is a paradise – a paradise not yet lost.