The tourism industry has jumped on the “green” bandwagon, moving to protect and enhance tourism destinations and to make lodgings and attractions more enticing to earth-loving travelers.
And the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council is doing its part with a colorful, fact-packed 40-page booklet describing ways to visit the region, enjoy a rich experience and still be sensitive to the river valley’s environment.
In a welcome page to the new “The Green Visitor Guide – Blackstone Valley, Rhode Island,” Robert Billington, president of the tourism council, writes that the booklet is for “… people who are seeking to delve more deeply and tread more lightly in their travels.”
The guide offers reams of information about where to bicycle, hike, kayak, dine, and pick local fruits, along with tips for the eco-friendly traveler (e.g., bring your toiletries; the tiny bottles of shampoos and lotions in hotel rooms are hugely wasteful to produce and discard).
The guide, which will be available this spring at the valley’s three welcome centers and other visitor centers throughout the state, is itself a project in green consciousness. Lesley McLaughlin, project coordinator, said it is printed by a Narragansett company (thereby supporting local businesses and reducing trucking) on fully recycled paper using soy-based inks and all-digital photography (thus eliminating photo chemicals).
Interestingly, a lot of the environmentally friendly tips in the guide are things that people can do at home as well as on a vacation, following the “reduce / recycle / reuse” mantra of environmental conservation. This reiteration of broad principles and daily practices in a guide for tourists is no accident, says Billington.
“Green tourism is green living,” Billington said. “We are not going to have sustainable tourism if we don’t get our backs behind sustainable living. The Green Guide is saying, ‘When you are here as a visitor, this is how we would like to interact with you. If you are a person seeking a gentler way to travel, we invite you to come here.’”
Linking environmental protection with tourism in the Blackstone Valley is particularly apt because, starting in the 1700s, the Blackstone River was part of the American Industrial Revolution, which propelled the United States to wealth and global economic power. Over the last three centuries, damming of the river, sewage from towns, and pollutants from mills literally killed life in the river. In the 1940s, mills began to pull out, leaving an environmental and economic wasteland. The devastation began to turn around in 1972 with efforts to clean up the river that continue today.
Billington, of the tourism council, says that the proud history of the mills and the people who worked there, the destruction of the river and its ongoing restoration are all part of the history of the place that tourists can learn and appreciate. He said, “This is our heritage, good, bad or ugly. The valley has a story to tell America: the story of industrialization and the story of regeneration, of taking the place back.” Therefore, promoting environmental sustainability and green practices in tourism is a natural outgrowth of the valley’s history of productivity, degradation, and renewal.
Billington says that, at this point, using green practices – like recycling, installing energy- devices, using non-toxic cleaners, purchasing from local farms – entails extra costs and requires the willingness to wait for a return on investment.
But he notes that restoring and preserving the health of the environment is by its nature a long-term project. “We have to ask ourselves, he said, “What are we doing today that will be supportable in the future? This is about protecting resources, managing the present, and protecting the future. If you don’t think that care for the environment is your responsibility, you are adding to the problem.”
“Right now,” Billington added, “Being green is expensive. But eventually, competition will take over.”
Billington says that Americans are still getting used to thinking green. In Europe, he said, groups planning meetings and conventions often demand green practices at hotels before choosing them for functions. •
