by Perry McCarney

Created on: February 28, 2009   Last Updated: May 07, 2011

To my mind the concept of ethical backpacking can be summarized in one short phrase: Tread lightly and treat kindly. This is equally valid if you are walking the trails in an area of natural beauty or living out of your backpack while exploring foreign lands, those just across the state line or on the other side of the planet. Surprisingly, a Google search on that phrase returned "no results", so I can't offer it as a quote from someone famous; nevertheless, I feel it epitomizes how we should interact with both the places we visit and the people we meet.

"Tread lightly" has both metaphorical and literal associations. In a world steadily awakening to concern about our negative impacts on the environment that gives us life, the term "ecological footprint", often abbreviated to eco-footprint, is increasingly in the eye of the public, and hopefully our thoughts. While this is generally related to the impacts of practices and lifestyles at home, it is just as relevant when we are traveling. The lighter we "tread", the less noticeable our eco-footprint.

This necessitates forethought. We need to consider the probable and possible results of our actions before we take them. Consideration for others should be quite easy if they are there, especially if they get in our face about it, but showing consideration for others in our actions when we are alone can be far more difficult. Littering is an excellent example.

How many beauty spots have you been to that have been marred by this nasty holdover from our arboreal ancestors? Yes, we developed the habit of littering that far back. When you live in a tree and you drop something, it vanishes from your environment forever. It is one of the relatively few instinctive human behaviors; we do it automatically when we are thinking of other things, we need to consciously decide to be tidy with our waste or train ourselves to be so as an over-riding learned behavior. So when alone or we believe we are unobserved, that little plastic wrapper off the snack bar we've just consumed while taking in the view, somehow just manages to slip out of our fingers. We were appalled at the litter when we arrived, yet subconsciously that just encourages us to let our instinctive behavior rule. We walk away having added to it.

It's even easier in well littered urban areas, we seem to presume everyone else is using the ground as a rubbish bin so we might as well too. Are we lemmings? Would we walk off a cliff just because everyone else is? Please

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