Preservation

The ecosystem of the Everglades is very fragile, and every Shark Valley Tour is an ecotour. Our staff is completely respectful of the environment around us, and we strive to maintain a perfect environmental record, meaning that we had no violations of environmental regulations or protocols on the Federal, State, or Local level.

Shark Valley Tram Tours employs Best Management Practices for environmentally sensitive operations, and here are some of the steps that we’ve taken to protect the land, water, plants, and animals of the Everglades:

Why Choose Our Educational Ecotours of the Everglades?

A female Anhinga showing thanks for our ecotours preserving her habitat

Anhinga

As part of the 2023 Green Parks Plan which encourages “Buy Green, and Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” Shark Valley is going aluminum to the greatest extent possible. You will no longer see plastic water or soda bottles at Shark Valley. We are doing our part to reduce the number of plastic bottles in the Everglades. Our gift shop will offer only aluminum beverages moving forward.

Why? Because aluminum cans/bottles have about 68% recycled material compared to plastic bottles’ 3%. Read more about the benefits of hydrating with aluminum in this article.

  • Over the course of the year, our ticket lamination/reuse program prevented more than 75,000 tickets from entering the waste stream.
  • Our use of corn and soy-based merchandise bags has kept traditional plastics out of circulation, while recycled and quick-composting trash bags have become standard procedures for our daily operations.
  • Shark Valley has also adhered to our commitment of using only environmentally friendly cleaners such as Enviro-One, Green Works, and Method.
  • All of our paper products contain a minimum of 40% recycled content, with most utilizing 100% recycled content.
  • The trams at Shark Valley run on Biodiesel (B99) which is basically a vegetable oil. The main sources are usually soy or other vegetable oils, based upon the growing season. We have used soy, canola, and even recycled vegetable oil from industrial fryers. The recycled oils are filtered and reprocessed into fuel. Most pure biodiesel fuels can be as much as ten times less toxic than ordinary table salt.
  • On-site waste disposal consisted only of non-hazardous materials. Removal of hazardous items such as vehicle fluids took place only while the vehicles were at licensed service centers with approved disposal facilities. Recycling is an integral part of our commitment to the environment, and we recycled more than 8 tons of materials such as plastic, glass, aluminum, cardboard, and paper products. We encourage visitors to purchase a reusable water bottle from our gift shop and utilize the onsite refill station to help eliminate the amount of plastic bottles entering the waste stream.

Our guiding goal is to keep the Everglades pristine, and we work toward that objective in all of our operations.