Red Rocks initiatives for sustainable development have fulfilled the dream of ensuring communities are the direct beneficiaries of all our actions. All the activities go under the name of Eco-tour have been designed to work on local sustainable development through tourism and the collaboration of external partners.
The Igihoho seed bag is one of these. This project idea came with Greg from Spain in 2016, and is implementing the governmental restriction on use and manufacturing of single-use plastic items, which were banned in 2008 and finally became law in 2019. For a long time already, these bags have represented a new norm for the region’s communities. They now regularly recycle the fibre of the abundant banana trees, and even before plastic was conclusively banned by law, they were experiencing the benefits and had introduced ecological alternatives for all their tree-planting activities. All the activities linked directly to the land, like local food preparation, farming with local families and beekeeping, and the botanical tours which can be taken in the Kinigi centre, are working in two directions: generating alternative income as well as educating the locals on the eco-friendly alternatives available, often from the same products that were considered as waste. Recycling, upcycling and other circular economy concepts are available to be explored and applied.
In Red Rocks currently, the workshops on the use of banana eco-paper production, the Igihoho eco-friendly seed bag and even the banana beer preparation are excellent opportunities to maintain environmental sustainable activities while providing extra income for the people directly involved and, at the same time, bringing benefits to the local environment and to the community as a whole.