About two years ago, we started talking about the ”nomad” life. The life where you had a van and drove around the world, exploring. From the start, it was just talk and some googling to see what kind of vans there were out there. One day I saw the perfect one not far away from me, so I picked up the phone right away and called the guy who was selling it. It was really spontaneous and the next day without really thinking, we had bought a van. Say hello to our Dodge Tradesman B-300 1976 van that we call Doris!

Numinous: “Describing an experience that makes you fearful yet fascinated, awed yet attracted- the powerful, personal feeling of being overwhelmed and inspired”

Our names are Emil and Estelle and we’re two, 20-year-old extreme sports enthusiasts with a lot of energy to spend. We’ve always been curious about what else is out there in the world. The impression a person in Europe gets of the rest of the world by watching mainstream media is not the most accurate one according to us. With all the news of horrific attacks and other cruelties around the world, we wouldn’t believe that everything was doomed. A motivation to explore all the hidden good things in the world and share them with as many people as possible around us grew. To meet new, positive thinking people and get an insight on their view of the world that we all share is a huge reason why we created this project, The Numinous Project.

After 8 months on the road throughout 18 different countries, we have experienced a lot of different environments and cultures. The beauty of being able to freely explore our surroundings is a really special and rare thing, which we want to preserve. We want people to have a good impression of us traveling people, and mainly we want our beautiful surroundings to keep existing without being destroyed by us humans.

The van life brought us closer to nature, but it also brought us closer to the reality of littering.

picking up trash on the road

The lifestyle of traveling around Europe in our van has really made us start to think differently about a lot of things. There is no better feeling than finding that connection with the outbound and realizing that you are the equivalent of a talking monkey on a round spaceship, shooting through the universe. We are small. We however, have a great impact on this round spaceship that we call mother earth.

August 2nd, 2017, we humans used up more resources than our precious planet could renew in the whole year. In other words, we are on a certain journey towards screwing up big time.

Our society is based on consumption, which results in a lot of packaging. Nothing makes this clearer than rolling up to a parking place in nature, just to be surrounded by piles of garbage and litter. Old beer cans, toilet paper, PLASTIC BAGS and all sorts of human waste can be found at almost every place to park for the night. Approximately 1 million seabirds die from plastic EVERY YEAR and plastic is the most common material of garbage that we’ve found in nature when we’ve traveled. We don’t necessarily know if the garbage around parking places in nature only comes from campers, but we do know that we want to change it.

desert trash

#spotthetrash

Some days ago, we decided to make it our own responsibility to take the time to clean up the spots we parked on ourselves. We figured, if everyone who is traveling in their vehicle and sleeping in different places just made it their responsibility to leave the place with less garbage than when they arrived, it would make a huge difference. To make this a little bit more fun, we started a hashtag with the name #spotthetrash and try to encourage other people to do their own little cleanups and share them via social media to keep track of the difference we can make together!

We are well aware of that similar tags are being used, for example, beach and ocean cleanups. Let’s use this one to create a positive impact from us ”vanlifers” who are both on beaches, mountains, forest etc. We could make difference in different kinds of environment and we could do it all over the world.

Join us in the journey of making our camping spots litter-free! Next time you get to a spot and think that the litter is ruining the coziness a little bit, take a little piece of your time to clean some of the mess up, take a photo and share it with the hashtag and we’ll support each other to make our surroundings a better place.

Check us out on Instagram: @TheNuminousProject

Spread the tag: #spotthetrash