So You Wanna Have A Green Vacation?
Tips on making your vacation greener
It’s great to be eco-friendly, but sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. Does having a green vacation mean missing out on enjoyment? Not at all. Read on for our tips on making your trip or vacation a little bit greener.
Plane Or Car?
There’s no getting away from it - cars spew out a lot of carbon emissions and burn a big hole in the ozone layer, if some scientists are to be believed. If you travel by car, you’ll be making a lot of starts and stops, adding to the environmental impact of your trip. Strangely, instead of driving, it might be more eco-friendly to take a direct flight (probably on the grounds that with a full flight there’s less impact per person), so book your car into an offsite airport parking lot and catch that plane. When booking your trip, choose an eco-friendly travel agent too.
Green Hotels
Getting eco-friendly accommodation does not mean staying in a shack. On the contrary, you can still stay in luxury at one of the country’s many green hotels. Green hotels minmize their impact by reducing packaging waste and waste in general, using low energy light bulbs and installing showers and toilets that use less water. They may also promote recycling and other eco-friendly strategies. There are green hotels all around the US - check out GreenHotels.com to see where you could stay.
Packing Tips
When it comes to packing, you can have all the comforts of home and still reduce your impact on the environment. Travel sizes of your favorite toiletries are certainly convenient, but a more eco-friendly option is to get reusable bottles and top them up from your home supply. That applies to drinking bottles too. And guess what? Packing light is not only good for your back, but for the environment. The lighter the cases, the less fuel the plane needs to take off.
Getting Around
Once you arrive at your destination, it’s time to think about how you will see the sights. When you book your green hotel, think about where you want to go, so you can find a place that will allow you to walk to some of the attractions. For those that are not within walking distance, consider using public transport to reduce your carbon footprint.
Where To Go
According to UNEP, eco-friendly tours have a few things in common: they have regard for conservation, they have small group tours, they make use of local businesses and resources, and they have an educational element. There are plenty of attractions that meet those criteria, so find one you like and start there. You can also do your bit by reducing the amount of packaging you use and by disposing of waste in an eco-friendly manner.
Giving Back
Once you have returned, there’s one final thing you can do to be kind to the environment - use carbon offset coupons which help offset your carbon footprint by contributing to wind farms, tree planting and other similar schemes.
Resources
Use the tips above to plan your green vacation and get more information from the resources below:
- Center for Sustainable Destinations - National Geographic (check out their resources page)
- Conservation International
- Climate Trust
- Eco Holidaying
- The Green Guide
- Green Hotels
- International Eco Tourism Society
- Native Energy
- Planeta
- Sustainable Travel
(Photo: eos53)
ParkRideFlyUSA and Taking Off Travel Blog would like to wish all our readers a Happy New Year, with best wishes for 2009.
Tags: ecotourism, ecotravel, green vacations, holiday, vacation
January 14th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Nice article!
It is great to be eco-friendly!
By the way, we are working on NaturCert+, which is our very own blog where we share our news and articles, and where visitors have the opportunity to share their activities and ideas with the rest of the world.
Our aim for NaturCert+, is to develop a public platform that will address a variety of issues related to responsible and/or sustainable travel & tourism and become a daily reading resource for a broad spectrum of visitors.
We aim to give the opportunity to bloggers to contribute and share their content relevant to responsible and/or sustainable travel & tourism on our blog and gain new readers and followers, more visibility and publicity, as well as better promotion while generating added value for the submitted content.
Please contact us on plus@naturcert.com if you are interested.
February 26th, 2009 at 9:35 am
[...] very little thought to the effect of travel on the places we visited. That has changed. Along with eco-friendly travel, people are talking about sustainable travel and responsible travel. But what exactly is it, and [...]