Why does this matter?
Tourists on vacation often generate more waste from single-use items. Material use indicates how resource-intensive a tour is.
How is it calculated?
It shows each tourist's daily material use versus a benchmark (scored 0-5). Model benchmark adopted: 2 kg per tourist per day.
What takes into account?
The indicator tracks only materials the tour operator gives directly to the client, such as:
- Plastics (bags, packaging, disposable items)
- Metals (foil, small equipment parts)
- Paper/cardboard (maps, leaflets, napkins)
- Textiles (linens, towels, promotional fabric items)
It excludes materials used by hotels or restaurants, office consumption, or upstream impacts.
The tour uses very little material and creates minimal waste.
Material use is low and well managed.
Material use is reasonable but not optimized.
The tour uses more materials than necessary.
Material consumption is excessive for this type of activity.
The tour relies heavily on disposable or short-life materials and needs major improvement.
Developed with the support of
Touristic Footprint Index (TFI) by
Portugal Outdoor Alliance (POA)
is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
