The great outdoors is our office and our playground, it is where we at Water By Nature work and where we have fun. Most importantly, it is where we entertain our clients. That is why we keep it clean. We are environmentally-friendly in as many small ways as possible, eg in our indoor office we prefer emailing instead of letter-writing, recycling everything we are able to recycle, and to make up for anything we cannot recycle (because the recycleman won’t accept it) we plant trees in Chile to offset this. In fact, we plant one tree for every client, so we have quite a small forest on a beautiful piece of land next to one of our favourite rivers. On our trips we do not leave anything behind where we camp – all rubbish is carried out and dealt with at the end of the trip, the same with human waste. We leave places like we found them, (sometimes even nicer than when we found them!) Let’s face it, rafting is an environmentally sound way to travel, the only energy needed to propel the boats forward is provided by the river and your arms!
To support the local communities, we buy our produce from them along the way, sleep and eat in locally-run establishments where possible, and interact sensibly with tribes on the riverbanks as we believe in positive cultural exchanges so as not to change their lives – this means trade not aid.
Continued conservation is important to us as well, particularly projects worked on by the International Rivers and their continued amazing working promoting alternatives to hydroelectric power. With the Zambezi facing a dam, river conservancy is as important as ever to save these wonderful environments for generations to come.