Policies and Planning

Sustainable Policies in Travel Excellence

Travel Excellence is strictly committed with the principles of responsible tourism such as the application of the environmental laws and regulations concerning national parks and reserves, as well as the compliance of the general laws that regulate activities of tour operators.

- We recommend hotels with sustainable and social responsibility.
- We offer local guides and certified drivers, specially trained in sustainable aspects.
- We support community tourism projects and regional arts and crafts shops.
- We help charity organizations in different communities throughout the country.

If you want to help, you can do it by supporting “clean-trip” projects to reduce carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and to minimize harmful emissions. The collected funds will be used to support projects of wildlife protection and to contribute with special community projects.

The suggested amounts are calculated according to FONAFIFO (Carbon Dioxide Compensation Program), current rules, and also to the cost of each ton of carbon, which is based on the approximate levels of C02 emitted on an average flight. Through this calculation, an estimated fee for every traveler is calculated, as a way to compensate the air contamination.

The best ways to support the carbon reduction projects is via FONAFIFO (Carbon Dioxide Compensation Program) or via MINAET (Carbon Neutral Program).

We make compensation payments for the carbon produced in our offices and transportation units.

Regulation and Law

Laws and regulations in Costa Rica, such as the public authority and citizen protection, are presented to our staff and clients, so they respect and follow these principles.

It is necessary to enforce national and international laws for flora and fauna protection, air quality, and environmental social sense as a way to protect the historical and cultural inheritance.

List of laws:

- Ley Orgánica del Ambiente (Organic Law for the Environment)
- Ley Forestal (Forest Law)
- Ley de Vida Silvestre (Wildlife Law)
- Convenio Internacional CITES (International Agreement CITES)
- Reglamento de Uso Público de Áreas Silvestres Protegidas (Regulation for the Use of the Wildlife Protected Areas)
- Comercialización del Patrimonio Arqueológico (Commercialization of the National Heritage)

Application of the laws:

- Ley de Hostigamiento Sexual (Sexual Harassment Law).
- Ley Contra la Explotación Sexual Comercial de Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes (Law against Sexual Exploitation and Commercialization of Children and Adolescents).
- Ley Contra el Consumo de Sustancias Ilegales (Law Against Consumption of Illegal substances).
- Ley de Igualdad de Oportunidades (Law for Equal Opportunities)

Quality

Our company, whose main objective is to satisfy our clients, is based on service standards that allow measuring client’s satisfaction by finding out what their needs and expectations are, as well as the idea of the company that clients have, depending on the experiences and the attention they received.

For this reason, we do our best to guarantee great quality products and services for our clients and intermediaries. In addition, we have a preventive maintenance program for our facilities, vehicles, and equipment.

Occupational Health and Security

To avoid accidents and health risk in the workplace, we have an integral health plan for all our staff. We also take care of our clients by:

- Offering healthy and safe essential conditions to all employees and clients.
- Providing proper working conditions to all employees in order to develop their functions in a safe and appropriate environment.
- Guaranteeing safety and security to our clients during all tourist and recreational activities, verifying that all suppliers fulfill safety regulations.
- Informing clients about safety measurements that they must follow during their stay in the country.
- Providing access to handicapped clients by adapting the services to the client’s needs.
- Enforce Law 7600 (Equal Opportunities for Disabled People in Costa Rica).

Solid Waste Management

Environmental conservation is an essential part in education. Knowing about topics related to the environment lets people act consciously. It is important to classify solid wastes according to the following parameters:

Reject: those products that are not renewable or reusable.

Reduce: overconsumption, especially of products that generate residues difficult to recycle.

Re-use: those objects that are no longer in use, especially empty containers.

Repair: damaged and old elements and re-use them.

Recycle: those products that are no longer in use but can be used as raw material for new products.

What’s recyclable?
Paper, plastic, organic material, glass, cans and others.

Paper
Every day, big amounts of newspapers are discarded in houses, working places, and different institutions. This material can be reused to manufacture great varieties of paper.

It is important to remember that:

When recovering paper and cardboard, it is recommended to classify them in:

- High quality: white paper, bond paper, photocopies, notebook paper, and computer paper.
- Low quality: newspapers, color paper, cardboard, and magazines.

Note: Wet or greasy paper, carbon paper, shiny paper, and paper with glue are not suitable to be recycled. There is no problem if the paper has been cut in pieces or crumpled.

Plastic
Plastic materials are used in many ways. We invite you not to consume high quantities of plastic material since it takes a lot of time to degrade, and it increases the negative impact on nature.

Plastic, classified by color and density, is used to manufacture hoses, hangers, garbage bags, and buttons, among others.

To recover plastic, it is necessary to have plenty of space due to its weight and volume. Here you can find some classification parameters:

- Rigid polyvinyl chloride: Cooking-oil bottles and some shampoo containers.
- Flexible Polyvinyl chloride: shoe soles.
- Polyethylene terephthalate: reusable soda bottles, disposable, plastic containers (buckets, sinks and containers in general).

Note: The plastic bottles that have been used with chemical products like pesticides cannot be recycled.

Glass:
Glass is one of the most widely used materials for packaging a great variety of products. Once they have been cleaned and separated by color (white, amber, or green) , these containers become raw material that will be melted up to 1200° Celsius and used to create new bottles.

Glass is 100% recyclable, and it does not lose any property during the process.

Metals
The most important metal products we consume are the ones made with aluminum and bauxite, such as beverage cans, wires, metallic parts of different means of transportation, and materials used by the companies of energy and telephony. Recycling metal is easy and gives us economic, social, and environmental benefits.

The classification of recyclable metals is:

- Ferrous Material: scrap metal used in equipment, irons, railroad tracks, pipes, windows, doors, heaters, stoves, and pots, among others.
- Non Ferrous Materials: aluminum, bronze, and copper.

In case of metal waste, it is recommended to recycle the following materials:

- Iron scrap
- Copper and bronze scrap

Flattening all aluminum cans reduces the space for storage.

Tetra Pak
In Costa Rica, it is not common to collect this kind of trash since there are not many companies in charge of reusing these materials for recycling. Every month, Travel Excellence gives all the collected material to a company which has the specialized machine to separate the three parts of tetra pack: cardboard (75%), polyethylene (20%), and aluminum (5%). The resulting material is used for helping social programs.

The company collects juice, milk, and wine containers that have the Tetra Pack logo. They must be flattened and cleaned to be suitable for recycling.

What Benefits Does the Recycling Process Provide?
The recycling process is considered a necessary activity, as it solves many problems related to solid wastes and because of the multiple benefits that it provides:

A. Social Benefits:
Community education: people who practice recycling are conscious about the importance of recovering wastes and transforming them into new products.

B. Environmental Benefits:
Conservation and environmental improvement: our environment will be cleaner by reducing the volume of solid wastes.

Protection of our natural resources through deforestation reduction: For every ton of recycled paper, seventeen trees are saved from being cut.

C. Economical Benefits:
For entities in charge of the public cleaning: costs are reduced since there is less wastes to collect, transport, and dispose.

D. Protection of Our Natural Resources:
Deforestation reduction, longer life for animals and plants, best use of sources like water, soil, air among others.

The Q-adra project is oriented to enhance the image of San Jose city. The project wants to benefit the commerce and clients through community effort, by working together to recover the environment of the immediate surroundings through managing leaders in each of the “cuadras” (blocks). In this way, they can show their neighbors good environmental practices, urban embellishment, and security.

Travel Excellence joined this project two years ago, and it is fully involved on supporting campaigns for collecting solid trash from streets and rivers and for reforesting natural areas, among other projects they lead.

Projects

Recycling Project for the Tetra Pak
Container material
Phone:(506) 2437-35-35

Container Recovery Project

The company produces two kinds of Tetra Pack containers that can be recovered for recycling:

- 1. Post-industrial: all containers that didn´t pass quality control.
- 2. Post-consumption: containers that are used and eliminated by the consumer.