Our Responsibility

The operation of our international journeys makes it possible for us not only to acknowledge our responsibility but to do something about it as well. Since the foundation of Lernidee in 1986, the company’s founder, Hans Engberding—who has a company bike instead of a company car—has placed great importance on conducting business in an environmentally friendly, socially just and sustainable way.

Lernidee participates in the CO2-Neutral Website Program. Our websites as well as the emissions generated by their use are neutralized by measureable CO2 reductions. These reductions are accomplished by building new, renewable energy sources such as wind turbines and by participating in controlled CO2-reducing projects.

Our ecological commitment starts in our Berlin office, where we print our catalogs and brochures exclusively on recycled paper certified with the German Blue Angel ecolabel. For many years, we have been sending the majority of our mail in climate-neutral way. Our websites are CO-neutral, as we compensate for 100 percent of the CO2 emissions created by their use and operation. For many years, we have been supporting the Noluthando Waldorf kindergarten in Cape Town, a village school in Laos, as well as orphanages in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, and in Irkutsk, Siberia, with the help of our guests. Additionally, it is a time-honored tradition at Lernidee to support local projects in Berlin as well—for example, free tutoring for immigrants, and steamboat trips for seniors and their grandchildren.

Would you like to experience exotic natural landscapes in an active way? Depending on the journey, we love to facilitate easy hikes, relaxed canoe trips and yoga or tai-chi introductions in an authentic atmosphere.

We inform our guests beforehand about their destinations with our comprehensive travel materials. We provide tips on communicating with locals and information about the condition and protection status of our destinations.

You may have already noticed that the paper in our catalogs is not as white as that of many of our competitors. This is because we have used recycled paper since 2016.

So as not to overburden our destinations, such as the beaches of Lake Baikal, we visit them only in small groups, respecting protected areas and leaving them cleaner than we found them. We support regional business cycles by hiring staff locally, by paying them fair wages and by providing them with regular training. We maintain secure, long-term business relationships in our destinations and pay our fair share of local taxes.

If you wish, we can arrange private accommodations in typical regional architecture, for example, a safari lodge in the Madikwe Game Reserve or in a Mongolian yurt.