@nolo It’s exactly that! You said it! How can we encourage & support caring for the environment?
You also said “Else one would need to you believe that being environmentally conscious is intrinsicely (sic) related to being respectful and recommendable”, and it’s right, @nolo, it SHOULD be like that, but, is it?
It’s a bigger issue (a survival matter, as we can see in the current earth health crisis) than just being a good cook or great conversationalist, which you also brought about in your (fallacious?) arguments.
It is a beautiful goal and many organizations (CS, as well, indeed) have this in their precepts, but is it true that they are helping in attaining that goal? In what I have seen, this has been widely used as a mere marketing mechanism.
You also said, if I understood you well that “If we introduce these badges and give less (I would say more) weight to them, there is certainly a lot of options how to do it”. So, probably you are much better qualified than me to tell us how can this be done! Why don’t we do it?
There have been several attempts to do this internationally and I mentioned before a platform that existed in the past, which tried to give weight to sustainability, and it’s unfortunately not among us anymore: https://www.biorama.eu/sustainable-couchsurfing-fur-eine-nachhaltigere-welt/
There is also an international organization worried to make tourism more environmentally and ethically responsible: https://responsibletourismpartnership.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=20ed1ef37090ccad3a0c5b3af&id=c59c6260ee&e=559e37f94c
That’s why if we care and are really serious about helping the environment, we have an excellent opportunity here, a new platform is a gigantic tool to make a difference and thus, to make this platform different, as Emily said “Ultimately we want to build something better than Couchsurfing so we might need to think outside the box a little.“