Eco-tourism is an entirely new way of going on holiday. It is a type of holiday which has arisen over the last twenty years, in line with the increased awareness in the ways in which humans have impacted the environment. Eco-tourism encompasses a wide selection of different types of volunteer work, stretching from spending your time planting trees, towards helping endangered species and cleaning rubbish. For example, in many of the island nations which have economies dependant on tourism, they have developed serious problems with garbage, as they have limited space to get rid of rubbish. Of course, this excess garbage can start to pollute the habitat of a lot of the native wildlife, and affect the health of the local inhabitants. An eco-trip to a place like this would involve spending half the period of your stay contributing to the effort, and then the other half taking your leisure in the same way as you would on a normal holiday, only hopefully with more awareness of your responsibilities in the upkeep of the local environment.