How to Travel Green

Whether you visit faraway relatives, go on a business trip, or take a vacation, almost everyone needs to travel a long distance at least once in their life. Any sort of travel has an environmental impact, but you can take a few simple steps to help reduce the environmental impact of your travels. You’ll be helping the environment, your wallet, and yourself!

BENEFITS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT: Almost a billion tourists travel the globe every year, which must have a substantial impact on the environment.¹ Being far away from home means you can’t reuse most of the creature comforts you’ve accumulated in your home. Instead, most people will need to rent or buy the same items that they use at home, which hotels and transportation services often provide without asking. As a green traveler, you can learn to minimize the environmental impact of your trip by packing strategically and turning down unnecessary and wasteful services.

BENEFITS FOR YOUR WALLET: By learning to reuse the resources you have, you can simultaneously conserve your own travel budget. Buying fewer wasteful, overpriced services and products aimed at unprepared tourists is surprisingly easy and simple.

BENEFITS FOR YOUR MIND: Instead of taking the standard path, you’ll get an exciting and new perspective around your destination. You might even have more unique memories to recall and to share with others. And, of course, you can feel better knowing that you didn’t just accept travel as an exception to your environmentalist ideals, but that you can actively reduce your environmental impact in small and meaningful ways.

Cost: Low to Moderate
Most of these tips suggest actions that don’t cost a thing, and which may actually save you money. On the other hand, more expensive sustainable practices may cost a premium over the standard rate.

Time and effort: Low
Traveling green does not require a lot of time and effort, as long as you are able to plan your trip relatively carefully. Much of traveling green is about avoiding the most common pitfalls and instead taking a simple and easy greener alternative.

Instructions:

1. Preparing to Travel
   
   • Pack light: Try to pack as few, and the lightest things that you need, in as few bags as possible. Not only will this save you the effort of carrying an extra bag, but it will also help to reduce the amount of fuel required to carry the weight of the bags.²
   • Turn off items at home: Remember to turn off or unplug everything that you won’t need to use at home. This includes the air conditioning, heating, water, appliances, the icemaker, and the newspaper. Don’t turn your water heater completely off, but dial it down to “Vacation” mode or the lowest heat level.³
     
   • Taking an eco-vacation: If you’re just taking a vacation and don’t yet have any destination in mind, you can really help to minimize the impact that you’ll have on the environment by choosing the most sustainable destinations and activities that help to preserve the natural environment. You’ll probably need to plan and pack a little differently, so read this article to help you make the most of your eco-vacation: “Take an Eco-Vacation”
     
2. Getting To Your Destination
   
   • Choosing a method of transportation: If you’re traveling long distances, most likely you’ll be taking a plane or a car. If possible, try to take a train or bus instead whenever you can, since on average these modes of transportation have a lower carbon footprint per mile.⁴ If you had planned a long road trip in a large van or SUV, consider renting a small car instead to minimize using gas.⁵ If you must take a plane, you should try to book a non-stop flight, which will be the shortest and most fuel-efficient method of travel.⁶
     
   • Picking an airline: Not all airlines are created equal. Some airlines have tried to green their skies by increasing fuel efficiency, using biofuel, recycling, offering fair trade coffee, and offering passengers to offset the carbon footprint of their flight. Virgin, recognized by Greenopia as the most environmentally friendly airline, does all of the above. Other high scorers for environmental initiatives are Alaska Airlines and Continental.⁷
     
   • Booking a ticket: Instead of asking for a paper ticket, ask for an electronic ticket. Airlines often offer e-tickets for customer convenience and to cut their own cost of printing them out. Not only is it more environmentally friendly, but also you don’t have to worry too much about losing your ticket, since all the information will be backed up on the airline computer system.⁸ The International Air Transport Association has estimated that an industry-wide complete switch from paper to e-tickets could save “the equivalent of 50,000 mature trees each year or about three square miles (five square kilometers) of forest.”⁹
     
   • Avoid airport food: Everything in the airport and in the plane will likely be heavily packaged and wasteful. Bring your own reusable water bottle so that you can fill up at a water fountain after the security checkpoint. If you can, bring your own snack in some Tupperware.¹⁰ If nothing else, it will certainly be cheaper than airport food. Be sure not to bring food with liquid-like substances like mashed potatoes or pudding, which could require an extra security check to ensure that those items are indeed food.¹¹
3. Getting Around Your Destination
   
   • Hotel Shuttles: Book a stay with a hotel that offers shuttle service to the areas you most want to visit. Many hotels include free transportation to major destinations in the area, such as the airport and local shopping districts. One helpful website that lists hotels with shuttle service in major metropolitan areas is: raveable.com
     
   • Walking, Biking, or Public Transportation: The most environmentally friendly practices at home are still the most environmentally friendly practices wherever you go. If you can, book a hotel that is within walking distance of your intended destinations. Renting a bike could allow you to go a little further than would otherwise be possible with just walking. Or, try to book a hotel close to a hub of public transportation, allowing you to travel the city or town as freely as possible.¹²
     
   • Renting a Car: If you must rent a car, rent as fuel-efficient a car as possible, such as a hybrid. Decline any offers for a free upgrade to a larger vehicle, which generally require you to refill them with more gas. For a listing of rental car agencies which offer greener options such as electric, flex-fuel, hybrid, and biofuel-powered vehicles, try this site.
     
4. Conserving in the Hotel
   
   • Picking a hotel: Try to stay at a hotel with a number of successful environmental initiatives. If you are just beginning your search, look on environmental rating websites or green certification companies, such as: responsibletravel.com. If you are deciding between only a few hotels, compare and contrast the hotels’ environmental conservation practices. Does the hotel offer recycling or composting? Are the lights and appliances energy efficient? Are the shower and toilets low-flow? Does the hotel utilize alternative energy sources to power the building?¹³
     
   • Avoid one-use amenities: Hotels often restock each room everyday with fresh amenities like towels, shampoo bottles, soap, lotion, and cups. These disposable items use a lot of packaging and create a lot of waste. To reduce your impact, just don’t use them. Instead, bring your favorite cups, soap, lotion, and shampoo from home. If you do end up using an amenity but do not finish using it, just keep it so you can use the rest of it later.¹⁴
     
   • Avoid room service: If you’re staying the hotel room for more than a day, ask the front desk or leave a note in your hotel room asking the housekeepers not to clean the sheets and towels. Otherwise, some hotels may unnecessarily wash them all after every night you stay. Imagine how much water, trash, and electricity that would use if you used all these at home everyday.¹⁵
     
   • Turn off everything you don’t need: On your way out of the hotel room, be sure to turn off everything you don’t need to use. Turn off the thermostat, TV, and lights. Close the drapes to insulate the room at the temperature that you want.
     
   • Electronic billing: Ask for an electronic version of the bill. It saves paper and allows you to check your bill at any time, anywhere.¹⁶
     
5. Being Eco-friendly Around Town
   
   • At restaurants: Bring the Tupperware again so that you can take food to go from restaurants without having to waste Styrofoam, plastic, or aluminum containers. It’s also convenient as a snack to bring on the road or flight home.¹⁷
     
   • Doing activities in a natural environment: Try to minimize your impact on the natural environment. That means don’t leave anything behind and try to pick up litter where you can find it.¹⁸ Don’t pick up anything else from nature, even as a souvenir, since it could mean disturbing the local environment and depleting a natural resource.¹⁹
     
   • While shopping: Depending on how exotic the area you’re visiting is, you may or may not encounter products sold mostly to tourists as souvenirs. Avoid products that could be made from endangered species like animal skins, shell, ivory, and feathers.²⁰ Buy products made locally so you minimize the amount of fuel needed to ship the product there.²¹ Remember to buy light so that you can pack as light as possible on the trip home.²²
     
6. Ending Your Trip
   
   • Offset your emissions: When you come back, try to offset the emissions that you made during the trip. Depending on the company, that could be around $10-40 a flight.²³ It will make you more aware of the cost of all those carbon emissions that you ended up contributing to the environment throughout your travels and you can feel better knowing that you did your part to make your trip carbon neutral. One to try:carbonfund.org.
     
   • Providing feedback: Whether or not the hotel was green, your contact with them afterwards can help guide their business decision towards sustainability. Send a thank-you note to green hotels thanking them for their green initiatives. If you didn’t think the hotel was as green as it could be, fill out a comment card to the manager giving he or she tips on what kinds of improvements the hotel could make to become more sustainable.
     
7. Have a fun trip!