Sustainability Report 2025

EcoNomad’s mission is to enjoy the pristine, enchanting nature of Kyrgyzstan without polluting it, and to share it with our guests by introducing them to the local people. At the same time, our activities provide financial support to local communities and raise awareness of the harmful effects of pollution from the plastic waste that is […]

EcoNomad’s mission is to enjoy the pristine, enchanting nature of Kyrgyzstan without polluting it, and to share it with our guests by introducing them to the local people. At the same time, our activities provide financial support to local communities and raise awareness of the harmful effects of pollution from the plastic waste that is becoming a serious environmental problem in Central Asia. Our guiding principles are to safeguard dwindling natural resources and to protect threatened biodiversity.

Our efforts have been recognised: in March 2022, we received the Travelife Partner Award. This award acknowledges our commitment to social and environmental sustainability. We meet more than 100 criteria relating to sustainability management, office operations, supplier relationships, and customer communication. We are working on further improvements in order to reach the Travelife Certified stage.

Travelife is the leading training, management, and certification initiative for travel companies committed to sustainable development. It is a three-step certification programme for tour operators and travel agents: (1) Travelife Engaged; (2) Travelife Partner; and (3) Travelife Certified. We are now working towards the third step, Travelife Certified.

In the report below, we describe the main measures implemented in 2021 to improve our company’s sustainability performance and to achieve our goals.

If you would like to learn more, please read our sustainability policy and feel free to contact our Sustainability Manager, Nuraly Turganbaev (economad.kg@gmail.com), with any further questions. Over the past two years, our sustainability efforts have been supported by the Green Tour project.

Caring for nature

EcoNomad actively seeks to reduce the negative impact of its tours and activities on the environment.

Our objectives are as follows:

  • Minimise the carbon footprint of our tourism products and office operations;
  • Power the office with renewable energy sources (in particular, solar panels);
  • Eliminate the use of single-use plastic as far as possible during tours and in the company’s offices.

These objectives have been pursued through the following actions:

  • We have introduced electronic document management instead of printing, replaced all light bulbs with energy-efficient alternatives, and adopted an energy-saving policy for all office equipment.
  • We have provided staff with appropriate sustainability training aimed at gradually phasing out single-use utensils and plastic in general;
  • We have set up waste sorting at the office (glass, plastic, paper, batteries) and supported local container-reuse initiatives by giving bottles to local farmers for bottling milk.
  • During tours, we have minimised the use of vehicles, giving preference to horseback rides, hiking, and cycling.
  • We have minimised plastic use by providing tourists with reusable tableware and encouraging them to avoid plastic water bottles.
  • During the golden eagle show, we abolished the practice of live hunting, presenting only the birds themselves and explaining how the hunt works.

Our team organised a clean-up of the pastures belonging to the shepherds we work with.

Caring for people and culture

EcoNomad strives to enrich the travel experience with authentic encounters while benefiting the local community:

  • Every tour includes a visit to a monument, museum, church, or similar site, in order to provide ongoing financial support to cultural heritage sites.
  • As a company, we support vulnerable members of the local community by providing financial assistance to causes we believe in. For example, we gave 200,000 soms in financial support to a family with many children who had lost its breadwinner, and we helped them buy a house in the village of At-Bashi.
  • We have developed and offered tourism products that help support local residents financially and introduce tourists to the region’s culture and traditions:
    • We have included visits to concerts by a local folk group in our tourism products;
    • We organised a culinary tour with Dungan families in Kochkor and Karakol, where guests learned about the history of these communities.
    • To promote the traditional craft of yurt-making and raise visitors’ awareness of it, we organised tours to the villages of Barskoon and Kyzyl-Tuu in the south of Issyk-Kul, where the craftspeople live.
  • The company ensured fair working conditions and decent wages for the porters taking part in the tours.

Raising awareness

EcoNomad is committed to raising awareness of and advocating for the development of sustainable tourism in Kyrgyzstan. To this end, we train and support our employees and engage our partners in sustainable development:

  • Our staff and guides have completed training in sustainable tourism.
  • Sustainability has become a regular part of the discussions at our team meetings.
  • We believe in the continuous development of our employees and suppliers. That is why we have organised various seminars, a European advanced training programme, a guides’ school, and a series of training courses in the field of sustainable tourism.