Eco Friendly Travel Tips
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Green your Vacation or Business Trip with Easy Eco Friendly Tips for Travel
Is it possible to be greener on vacation without putting a serious cramp into your fun or spending additional money? Yes! You'll actually save money, make your trip more fun, try new things, and have less to carry. Read on for some ideas and eco friendly travel tips!
Contents at a Glance
Green your Hotel Stays
Consume less while staying overnight and be more eco friendly
Staying away in a hotel can consume a lot more waste than you might think. You might be thinking that you just sleep in the bed and leave, but there's more to the process. When you arrive in the hotel, you check in and enter your room. Once in the room, the temperature might be adjusted, the lights are turned on in every corner, the TV is left going, and all the free toiletries are scoffed up.
What can you do to lighten your load on your hotel stay?
To make your hotel stay a little greener, try out the following:
- Reuse your towels. If you're staying in a hotel more than one night, hanging your towel back on the rack universally means "I'll use it again." That way, you'll be conserving extra water and energy from washing an extra towel.
- Conserve extra water by limiting your shower time.
- Opt out of receiving a newspaper if possible. Save a tree.
- Get paperless billing for your hotel stay. You can often avoid getting a bill if you use express checkout.
- Take the stairs. If you're able, spare some electricity and walk the stairs. It's good for you!
- Don't take all of the toiletries in the room unless you really need them. Besides, the quality of the hotel toiletries isn't something that you'll want to remember when you get home!
- Bring your own food. Vending machine snacks are full of excessive packaging, not to mention they're notoriously unhealthy. Pack up snacks in reusable containers of various sizes and you'll be eating better, saving money, and doing a good green deed by avoiding all of that packaging.
- Turn down the AC or heat in your room. Crack a window if possible and get some fresh air! Turn down thermostat just a few degrees in the cold weather and you'll sleep more comfortably and save energy.
- Don't have the bedding changed unless necessary. One room's hotel bedding can often take up one normal sized washing machine!
- Instead of using disposable styrofoam coffee or water cups, bring your own reusable mug or plastic cup. It tastes better that way anyway.
From reusing towels to leaving that hotel soap, you can make a small impact on the amount of resources you consume while staying
A Vacation Poll
It's okay to admit, this poll is anonymous! So here's our question...
Green your Ride - Get a More Efficient Vehicle
Opt for a gas efficient car rental and save cash, lower emissions
Hybrid rental cars are tougher to come by in most rental dealerships than regular non-hybrid cars. Not surprisingly, hyrbids like the Toyota Prius, Honda Civic Hybrid, and Toyota Camry Hybrid often top "most fuel efficent car" lists everywhere. Generally, the smaller the car, the less gas it consumes. The hybrid version of the Chevy Tahoe is going to consume far more gas than the non-hybrid Toyota Yaris. Here's a list of cars that aren't gas pigs that would be excellent fuel efficient picks when non-hybrid cars are your only choice:- Volkswagen Jetta
- Nissan Versa
- Hyundai Sonata
- Honda Civic
- Ford Escape Hybrid
- Toyota Yaris
- Hyundai Accent
- Ford Focus
- Chevy Cobalt
- Mazda Mazda5 Minivan
- Kia Rondo
Chevrolet Cobalt: It's not a hybrid, but it's greener than the hyrbid version of the Toyota Highlander.
Using Alternative Transportation
Ditch the car and go by foot to save energy and burn calories
When you're staying in large cities, public transportation is always an option. Buses are often very affordable, while travel by train can save time and money. In some cities, there's also the alternative of public boat transportation (like in Boston and New York City).You can find the local public transportation in any city you're visiting by using the American Public Transportation Association.
Green Travel with Pets
Even pets consume energy! Make their travel experience a little more earth friendly...
Pet travel has become enormously popular in the past decade. Along with this newfound habit and growing love for our pets comes increased energy consumption! First you may want to analyze where you might be consuming energy...Some Places your Pets Consume Energy
- Eating and transporting food (are you bringing too much?)
- Their body weight when travelling (can't do much about this!) by air, car, train etc.
- Excrement -- paper towels and pooch bags to clean up the mess
- Purchasing special pet transport supplies -- portable bowls, pet carriers...
- Wee pads (if still traning), packaging for pet food
As you can see, pets consume things just like people. However, it's really people consuming these things and making these decisions, not the pets. As much as we love our pets, it might be a better idea to leave your pet with a friend or family member sometimes. Travel is very stressful for most animals. If you do decide that Fido has to make the trip with you, consider bring reusable containers for food, and only bring as much as you know your pet will eat during the trip. There's also biodegradable pooch bags available that will break down in a matter of months instead of hundreds (to thousands) of years.
Flying Green - Choosing the Most Eco Friendly Planes
Carry on luggage is becoming heavier. New fees attached to checked luggage mean more stuffed overhead bins.
Trains vs Airplanes
While trains may emit less pollution than airplanes, jets often have an overall better efficiency rating. Flights are often near capacity, resulting in a maximized efficiency and greener form of transportation.
Is it possible to fly greener?
Packing Green
Making your trip less wasteful and more streamlined
Full size toiletries, cologne bottles, six pairs of pants, ten shirts, 3 sweatshirts, 3 pairs of shoes, a laptop, cosmetics, huge duffle bags, a suitcase, 3 books, a binder, a stack of work papers and a jacket. Sound like what you might take with you on your trip?
If you're taking a heavy load like this, you may want to rethink it: is it really essential? With extra fees for luggage on planes, there's never been a better time to lighten your load while travelling.
Here are some of the advantages to travelling lighter:
- Shorter wait time. If you can carry on all of your luggage, you won't have to wait to pick up your checked luggage. Just get off the plane and go.
- Less to worry about before the trip. If you're packing less for the trip, that's less time wasted packing unnecessary things. And nowadays, time is money.
- Less energy wasted while flying. Simply put, less weight on the plane will burn less gas. Less fuel burned means less emissions spread into our atmosphere. Less emissions means a slower rate at which our ozone layer is depleting, therefore slowing global warming (even if just a tiny, tiny fraction).
- A more organized trip. Peace of mind is far more precious than an extra bottle of hairspray. Streamlining your luggage can simplify your trip and leave you more time to enjoy your vacation (or leave you more time to relax on your business trip).
Eating Green - Healthy, Eco Friendly Food Options for Travel
Food on-the-go that won't have a huge impact on our environment
We're not talking about spinach, broccoli and lettuce, we're talking about the amount of energy the food you eat consumes from the moment it's being grown to the moment it arrives on your plate. Fresh foods, for example, don't use as much energy to create since there's no production involved. The fruit or vegetable is picked and shipped to you. A bag of chips, however, is different. The potatoes are grown and picked, the veggie is cut, fried, salted, and packaged up to send to you. That extra step or two in the process involves more emissions ane energy.
Meat also uses more energy than raw foods. Feeding the livestock, cleaning up after them, preparing them, packaging the meat, and shipping the meat is very labor intensive, not to mention an energy hog.
Any prepared food is going to have an extra amount of packaging that's most likely going to be thrown away. From vending machine candy to individually wrapped 100 calorie pack crackers, this extra packaging winds up going directly into landfills. Even the most creative person would find it difficult to repurpose 100 calorie snack pack plastic bags. Using your own reusable containers, portioning your own "100 calorie packs" and avoiding the packaging is an easy way to save money and be a little greener on vacation (and for the office, for that matter).
Raw foods use less packaging and aren't cooked, so they use less energy, too.
Don't worsen jet lag symptoms!
Convenient, high sugar foods like cookies and carb heavy breads are going to bog you down and worsen any jet lag. Bring fresh cut veggies and a sandwich you made yourself on the plane would be a much fresher and healthier option, not to mention be a little greener, too.
What Do You Bring?
Tell us what you bring on your travels!
Bring your Own Refillable Containers
Is buying more greener?
When it comes to packaging, it's often a greener choice to buy more. Buying the bigger size containers and portioning them out into reusable containers can save yourself lots of cash and cut down on excess packaging that would otherwise end up in a landfill.
Green Travel Videos
Videos about making your travel a more eco friendly
Browse More Green Lenses by TheGreenerMe:
Have Some Green Travel Tips of your Own?
Share them with everyone!
Leave a note in our Guestbook to let us know you were here or to just say hello!
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smithlights
Jun 13, 2011 @ 3:22 pm | delete
- I used to tour for work and spent months living in hotel rooms. In one, (yes, ONE) hotel over the years, they did not offer tiny bar soaps, but refillable hand soap dispensers. I can only imagine what a difference this would make! They also had a refillable shampoo dispenser in the shower. I believe they had small ones available at the desk, but imagine the amount of soaps and wrappers they saved! I wish it would catch on!
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fguhgfug
Jun 3, 2010 @ 1:30 am | delete
- help with an assignment thanks
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aesta1
Mar 25, 2010 @ 7:33 pm | delete
- I really like the tips here. We travel all the time and doing one or two of these to start will bring some benefits. Will really try this time.
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Dreff
Aug 16, 2009 @ 4:23 am | delete
- Some great tips here, I will surely remember at least some of them next time I travel.
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totalhealth
Aug 12, 2009 @ 8:32 am | delete
- excellent information. traveling is fun and full of memories but little we realize that it causes such a great impact on our environment. Following your tips, we could still make our travels fun and memorable but limiting our impact in our environment, thanks.
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Fetching RSS feed... please stand byGreen Lodging Across America
Where exactly are those eco friendly hotels, anyway?
Green Travel: The World's Best Eco-Lodges & Earth-Friendly Hotels (Special-Interest Titles)
Amazon Price: $13.87 (as of 02/13/2012)
Would it be nice if you knew exactly where those earth friendly hotels and lodging were located across the USA?? Now you'll know with this great guide from Fodor's titled "Green Travel: The World's Best Eco-Lodges & Earth-Friendly Hotels"! It's a wonderful way to cut back on the energy you use during a vacation, while supporting hotels that are making the effort to diminish the impact on the environment. Read which ones Fodor's recommends the most in this guide!
