Tue 22 Apr 2008
Posted by Meg under Vacation
In honor of Earth Day 2008, I’m going to use this space to talk about travel and the environment. You probably know that almost all major methods of transportation have a huge ecological impact. Hotels are notoriously inefficient and wasteful, as well, so unless you’re planning on biking to your next vacation destination and then camping out the whole time, you’re probably going to be increasing your carbon footprint when you travel.
If this rubs you the wrong way, you don’t have to scrap all of your vacation plans. Simply do a little research to find ways to reduce and offset your negative impact while you vacation. For instance, did you know that each flush of an airplane toilet costs enough fuel to run a car for six miles? Who knew that timing your potty breaks could save the planet?
More helpful hints like this one are all over the internet. For simple green travel tips, Divine Caroline has a good list here. These are common sense and easy to work into your itinerary, like renting a hybrid car if you need a rental vehicle — it’s nice for the environment because it won’t burn as much gas, and it’s nice on your wallet, because you won’t buy as much gas. It’s win-win.
You may think that staying in an eco-friendly hotel means that you’ll be sleeping on dirt floors and bathing in a creek in the woods. Not so! Lots of big, luxury hotels are going green — it saves them money to do so, after all — and you’ll still find the comfortable accommodations you’re used to. Check out It’s A Green Green World or Green Hotels to find eco-friendly accommodations at your next destination. These sites list places to stay all over the world.
As travelers, we have a huge influence over lots of businesses throughout the travel industry, because by taking our business only to the greenest vendors, we encourage the competition to step up their conservation efforts as well. When you tell a rental car company that you won’t be patronizing their business unless they can give you a hybrid or alternative-fuel vehicle, you’re sending a very clear message. Of course, this is true not just when you travel, but any time you spend your money. Hopefully you are always careful to support only businesses with the best environmental track records.
Local governments all over the US are starting to tighten environmental laws to ensure that their cities have clean air and water, as well as businesses that you can feel good about supporting. If you want to reward these areas with your tourism dollars, check out this Popular Science article about America’s 50 Greenest Cities. Various publications do annual rankings, so you may find some other lists out there, but you’ll see most of the same cities on all of the lists, and this is the most recent I found, published in February 2008.
Earning top honors on Popular Science’s 2008 list was one of my favorite cities, Portland, Oregon. I’ll be headed back there in a week, after a short stopover in another green city, Austin, Texas, which came in at number 10 on the list. Hopefully I’ll find some green experiences to report back on.
Happy Earth Day!