IT’S NO SECRET THAT OUR WORLD IS IN CRISIS ECOLOGICALLY. While sorting your recycling and refusing plastic bags is a good start, if you’re passionate about sustainability, your time can be better spent digging your hands into environmental issues abroad. Working on sustainability projects, in many cases, will be a chance to escape the big cities and learn about the local culture from the ground up. By picking your own dinner on an organic farm or fighting pollution on a Greenpeace boat, you’ll be helping sustain the planet for generations of backpackers to come.
YOU’VE SURELY HEARD OF the world-changing force that is Greenpeace, but did you know it all started with a boat? In the ’70s, when shit was shaky, a few Canadian hippies got on a boat to Amchitka, Alaska, in hopes of peacefully rolling through to stop U.S. nuclear testing in the area. In true hippie fashion, the money to fund the voyage came from a concert headlined by Joni Mitchell, which sold out and raked in a good chunk of change for the cause. The voyage was both a failure and a success. While the U.S. navy stopped the hippie ship dead in the water, the awareness that their bold actions brought inspired the formation of an organization that would change the face of the world, one environmental issue at a time.
Today, the “meet them head-on” mission is still alive and flowing through the organization’s green veins. Headquartered in Amsterdam, Greenpeace organizes activists around the world to address issues like deforestation in the Amazon, sustainable agriculture, toxic pollution, and saving the Arctic. You can volunteer in your local community or at their headquarters (if you have a Dutch work visa or EU passport, that is), donate some dollars, or raise awareness online. All good and great, but if you’ve got a little sailing experience under your belt, Greenpeace offers three-month, paid stints on their muthafuckin’ boats!
Sticking to the original mode of activist transport, Greenpeace has a fleet of ships, including inflatable boats with super-fast engines that they use to roll up on trouble. The fleet includes The Rainbow Warrior, The Arctic Sunrise, The Esperanza, and The Argus, and all of the ships are refurbished to be completely eco-friendly and safe. Past missions have included actions against nuclear testing, offshore oil drilling, and toxic dumping. In addition, Greenpeace conducts various eco studies aboard their ships, sailing to locations all around the world to collect data. If your sea legs are wobbly, they also have hot air balloons that hold up to three people and occasionally drift around campaigning for clean air.
To apply for a ship job online, you must either have some experience and valid STCW-95 license or convince them that you’re too awesome to pass up in 2,500 words or less.
FREEDOM ISN’T FREE. LEAVING
The Man behind may have been the reason for your trip, but he’s still out there—lurking in every corner of the world—demanding that you pay up. With work visas and employment restrictions, you can’t simply slap on a suit and tie and sell your soul for a little dough on the road. But don’t worry. There are plenty of ways to boost that bank account while you’re livin’ the life—and none of them require paperwork or government approval.
Get Crafty
Making cool shit and selling it on the street is .the most popular way back-packers keep the cash flow positive. The possibilities are endless, and you don’t need much capital to get started. You can eat for weeks by making necklaces and earrings from shells, discarded wire, and pretty river stones. Stock up on string and hooks in a big city. But be warned: in certain countries or cities it might be illegal or even require a permit to sell products or collect shells, so be sure to do your research first!
Go Green
European festivals are breeding grounds for cold, hard cash. In many countries, like Germany, you can trade in plastic bottles for moola. Most festival-goers are too stoned to worry about where they leave their recycling—consequently, surrounding campgrounds become treasure troves of plastic bottles waiting to be traded for cash.
Tried and True
Offering your own sweat and blood is the oldest trick in the book, and it works like a charm. Many hostels need an extra pair of hands in the kitchen or bar, and will offer you a free bed and/or cheap food in exchange. It’s a prime gig for meeting people—who doesn’t want to cozy up to the bartender?
Get Gnarly
Ali Baba pants aside, dreadlocks are the ultimate in backpacker chic. If you can make em, you’ve got guaranteed work in the traveler’s community from Fiji to France. Depending on where you are, you can get more than $100 a head—especially in beach towns. Pack a couple of metal crocheting needles and a dog comb, and then watch some YouTube tutorials to give yourself a dread-ucation.
Kick It and Flip It
If circumventing the globe is in your travel plan, with a little forethought, this gig makes fiscal sense. While chilling in cheaper countries, like India or Thailand, stock up on cool, lightweight hippie shit. When you make it to the other side of the world, sell it at street fairs or festivals.
“BURNERS” ARE REGULAR attendees of the Burning Man Project—a weeklong, communal utopian festival that takes place in a Nevada “playa” for one week at the end of every August. Describing Burning Man to someone who has never gone is like explaining yellow to the colorblind. But just to give you an idea: start with a wild, mind-boggling array of costumes, art cars, sound camps, and massive exhibits, all provided by the self-reliant community. Insert a group of Burners tripping, rolling, bumping, dropping, and puffing—pretty much everything a fat kid does in gym class—and smatter it all with looooove, and you’ve got a peek into the phenomenon. Burning Man festival is a tripped-out week of debauchery and creativity in the desert, and the visuals that come out of it are reminiscent of the things that make Hunter S. Thompson iconic to our generation. Add a bit of Mother Teresa’s do-gooder mentality to that to create Burners without Borders (BWB), an organization that is dedicated to creatively approach world issues. BWB began in 2005 when a group of Burners helped rebuild several New Orleans communities ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. The idea caught fire, and the organization now travels across the globe to lead grassroots campaigns in desperate areas where all other aid has failed.
In 2007, an 8.0 earthquake threatened to wipe the coastal town of Pisco, Peru, off the map. International aid poured in, but then many aid groups hitched a ride with the camera crews on their way out of town. Pisco Sin Fronteras (“Pisco without Borders”) is BWB’s first international offshoot and is still going strong. Their projects include rebuilding the city’s infrastructure (homes, sanitation, schools), promoting community involvement, preserving and restoring the environment, and even producing their own biodiesel fuel. PSF is looking for skilled volunteers but just like on the playa, they’ll welcome anyone who cares with a great big hug.
Life in Mombasa’s Kongowea slum was pretty destitute, and there was little hope for improvement. Local businesses took in about $5 a day, could not get a loan, and could not afford to hire from the huge number of unemployed people. Donations that came into the community flowed directly out of it, leaving little currency and trade within Kongowea. A lack of social services, like waste management, made things even slummier. Burners without Borders developed an ingenious economic model to promote local businesses and beautify the slum by printing a local currency for use only within Kongowea. The “Eco-Pesa” is backed by, and pegged to, the Kenyan shilling and was introduced to seventy-five local “Eco-Businesses” at a discounted rate. The exclusive currency kept trade locked inside of Kongowea. Donations were converted to Eco-Pesa and used to pay kids for trash collection, tree planting, community service, and anything else that would help turn the community from a craphole into a place worth living. The Eco-Pesa could then only be spent within the community, generating more local business. Finally, low-interest Eco-Pesa loans were distributed to small, eco-friendly businesses. The program has proven to be successful and has since expanded to other slums of the city. Volunteers are needed as they look to replicate the model elsewhere in Kenya and abroad.
“Beige” is as much a take on the city name as it is a description of the thick haze that has its inhabitants in a constant chokehold. The smog is so bad that it frequently forces the cancellation of outdoor school activities and is known to ground flights. Twenty million Beijingers don’t even realize this is fucked. The government calls it a “fog,” and access to the outside world is blocked by the Great (fire) Wall of China. The challenge wasn’t overwhelming enough to deter a group of Burners, though. The small, free-spirited operation has been promoting environmental awareness through the arts since 2007. Exhibits and competitions use recycled materials to engage and educate the Beijing community about conservation and sustainability. In an effort to clear the air, Greening the Beige encourages ideas from volunteers that explore the project’s endless creative potential.
WWOOFING DOESN’T REFER to barking but stands for “World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms”-ing. This network (WWOOF) was developed to link volunteers to organic farms with available volunteer opportunities. You volunteer on an international farm for an agreed amount of hours, and they feed and house your hungry, broke ass. Pretty fair deal. Nothing extravagant here, but given the prices of organic, fresh-from-the-ground food and housing, it’s a good trade-off.
Unfortunately, the factory farming method of meat production in the United States is spreading its long arm overseas. By now, you have all seen the hidden camera videos of animals on large farms being abused and neglected, and of chickens with breasts so large that their legs break, cramped in tiny spaces to maximize production. Our cows are diseased, pigs are electrocuted, and turkeys are strangled, and all in the name of producing the millions of burgers, nuggets, and what-nots we’re all so attached to.
When animals become commodities and farms are replaced by factories, humane methods of raising and slaughtering animals are compromised to turn higher profits. In response, some have chosen to become vegetarians, while others have deferred their hard-earned cash to more expensive organic, freerange meat and dairy options. The sad truth is that small, humane, family-owned farms are struggling to compete. Being a vegetarian, vegan, or organic/free-range meat-eater is a statement; rolling up your sleeves and actually getting down and dirty at a farm is putting your statement into action.
No farming experience is necessary to wwoof with the best of them. Daily duties range from milking cows to plowing, sowing, maintaining animal sheds, and planting seeds. This work will be hard, and you will get that ugly farmer’s tan, but your contribution will be greatly appreciated and rewarded.
Even if you couldn’t care less about the well-being of animals, by volunteering you get to live in a foreign country of your choice as a farmer (which is the closest you can get to local culture) and escape the tourist traps by living in the countryside. Plus, you get the freshest food available in the region, daily.
Whether you’re a vegetarian looking to support small farms or a meat-eater looking for a unique (and damn cheap) way to live and eat abroad, hooking up with a farm through the WWOOF network is a good idea. While your friends back home are eating canned, frozen, and pesticide-covered produce, you’ll be holding a fresh, organic vegetable in one hand and a hoe in the other.
1. Wwoofing organizations exist almost everywhere in the world where there is a farm. There is no global membership, but you sometimes have to pay a small, country-specific annual fee (used to maintain the organization) to join the wwoofing network. For instance, the annual fee in Argentina costs $28, but Estonia is free. Go to Wwoof.org, pick a country, pay your fee, and you’ll get a list of farms.
2. Choose your ideal farm (animal, fruit and vegetable, grain, or a combination) from the list. Keep in mind the type of work will correlate with the kind of farm you choose. So, if squeezing udders makes you shudder, stick to produce production.
3. Contact the farm to make a volunteer arrangement. Find out about: duration of volunteership, hours of work per day, days of work per week, type of accommodations offered (tent, private/shared room), and proximity of surrounding towns.
4. Get a plane ticket, put on some sunscreen, and get to work.
HUG IT FORWARD, A UNITED States-based nonprofit, takes the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” mantra to a new level. In 2009, these guys began constructing “bottle schools” from plastic bottles and other trash in Guatemala. Most of the villages where bottle schools are built are rural and poor, often hours from a paved road. Sadly—but also happily—these trashy classrooms are often the first schools the villages have ever had.
The first step to building a bottle school is to collect thousands of plastic bottles and make them into eco-bricks by stuffing them full of inorganic trash (to prevent the school from rotting.) The frame is built from concrete and iron for strength. Then, the eco-bricks are stacked on top of each other and sandwiched between chicken wire. A couple layers of cement are slapped on for good measure, and then the building gets its Central American mojo when it’s painted in festive colors.
These schools aren’t built in a day, or without plenty of lending hands. Serve the World Today, a for-profit company, runs voluntourism trips in coordination with Hug It Forward. By volunteering your time and taking a trip down (with twenty-four other like-minded volunteers), you can do some good for Guatemala.
A bottle school is an in-yo-face testimonial to the possibility of local building, even in the most remote or impoverished communities. But there’s more than radical eco-construction going on here—building a bottle school cleans a community’s bottle-clogged gutters, educates local kids about recycling, and in the end, gives kids a space within which to learn and play. More than fifteen have been built since the program began.
A bottle school trip includes a coffee farm tour, cultural talks, meals prepared by a private cook, and trips to the trippy Mayan ruins at Mixco Viejo and the city of Antigua, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Most importantly, because you’ll be working shoulder-to-shoulder with the locals, you’ll have the chance to build relationships with both Guatemalans and other volunteers.
A bottle school trip costs around $1,195, which covers everything but your transportation to Guatemala, booze, and souvenirs. Additionally, every bottle school volunteer is asked to fundraise $250 for the project predeparture. However you decide to do this is up to you, but Hug It Forward has some fun suggestions, and every cent of the money you raise goes directly to a school project. Just like every small piece of trash that eventually constructs a school, it’s worth every penny.
