Park Preserve

Park Preserve works to resolve the strain that uniformed tourism places on the parks— local, state, and national— which is the root cause of the problems these parks are currently facing— erosion, over-socialization of wildlife, waste disposal and litter, infrastructure decay, inability to support the sheer number of visitors, trampling of vegetation, air and land pollution, and introduction of invasive species. An uninformed tourist can be defined as a tourist who visits a place— in this case a national, state, or local park— without understanding how to appropriately interact with the place they are visiting, causing the previously described negative and detrimental impacts to the place they are interacting with. Park Preserve resolves this strain by providing a kit chocked full of education and information for protecting our parks made to address young children and adult. Not only does this kit exist to educate, it works to divert tourism to local and state parks that are often neglected due to the popularity of national parks. The kit comes with a few items: A Hike in the Park— a childrens book— which explains to children how to be in informed tourist written and illustrated completely by me,  The Park Passport which functions as a pocket sized guide and journal to keep track of the parks you visit and your cancellations, three Pass Along Guides which summarize the content found in the guide into shortform lists meant to be given to friends or fellow hikers to spread the principles of informed tourism in the parks, and a sticker to show your support. Secondly, this strain is resolved through ‘futurecasting’, I explore how Park Preserve provides an example of what a small company can do to make a difference in its practices that impact the planet.  If this project was a real company, not only would it be a fully sustainable company through its materials and its printing practices, but the it would run purely to offset the impact of uninformed tourism through materials being provided on donations and be completely free for people to order (with the option to make a donation, of course, with the caveat that all donations go directly back into providing more kits to more people for free).