2018 is just around the corner and New Year resolutions are about to be made. Most are as usual related to working out, losing weight or improving your personal economy. But how about making a resolution for the environment?
Impacts of travel usually revolve around how great the improvements of national parks are for wildlife, how local communities are supported by visiting as a tourist and how travelling improves understanding of other cultures. However, a more delicate subject is the huge negative impact travel has on the environment. A round trip flight from Central Europe to New York pollutes about as much as an average car does throughout a year. Therefore we have gathered some tips below to save the environment, as well as money.
Take the train
It is possible to fly almost everywhere now, but in many places, especially in Europe, trains are just as accessible, faster and cheaper. You don’t have to show up hours in advance and the carbon footprint is way lower than flying.
Fly with carry-on luggage
Trains aren’t always an option, and if you have to fly, try to skip the check-in luggage. Any weight that can be avoided makes the airplane lighter and contributes to a lower fuel consumption. It may not sound like it makes a huge difference, but American Airlines changed their «analogue» paper manuals with iPads and saved around 16 kg per flight, in other words a typical weight of check-in luggage. Throughout a year this added up to a fuel saving of 1.5 million liters and the same can be saved if only one person skips check-in luggage on each flight.
One long trip is better than many short ones
Transport is a huge contributor to CO2 emissions. If you can go on one long vacation rather than many short ones it will drastically reduce emissions and save your wallet as well. This summer we travelled through 5 countries in Southern Europe and we allocated a bit more time to do this once rather than going back and forth many times.
Carbon offsets
Many airlines have started to offer carbon offsets to make up for the emissions you produce by flying. The money goes to environmentally friendly organizations working on CO2 reducing projects, such as planting trees.
Be environmentally friendly at home…
…when you’re not there! While you are traveling lights and heaters at home can be switched off and paper magazines and newspapers can be cancelled temporarily. And of course remember to be environmentally friendly when you are at home as well…
Avoid overtourism
Some places see so many tourists that it can be directly harmful for the area. At the Troll’s Tongue (Trolltunga) in Norway there are now signs stating that no tents can be pitched within a 3 km radius from the hiking trail to prevent the area from being worn down. At the same time they have completely damaged a mountain side to make room for a new road to accommodate even more tourists, but that is something completely different…
By avoiding these kind of places that are about to collapse by overtourism or visit in the low season it can help balance the pressure and you get to see something interesting, as opposed to thousands of selfie sticks.
Drink tap water
Drinking tap water abroad is scary, right? Not really. Most European countries have safe tap water and so does many other places in the world. We have even had tap water in Africa! Choosing tap water over bottled water saves money, reduces consumption of plastic goods and is usually always nearby.
Buy large water bottles
While on the subject of bottled water: Some places it is really necessary to drink bottled water. In these cases it’s better to buy one large bottle and use it to refill your everyday bottle rather than buying a plethora of small bottles, again contributing to plastic waste reduction.
Do the same as back home
There are numerous measures to save the environment independently of travel. These measures can of course also be applied while traveling. For instance one can use reusable shopping bags when getting groceries rather than disposable plastic bags.
Other sources of environmentally friendly travel advice
- World Wide Fund for Nature has numerous tips for more environmentally friendly travel
- Calculator for carbon emissions
- Carbon offsets can be purchased from SAS, KLM, JetBlue, Delta, United Airlines and many others.
Do you have any tips for environmentally friendly travel? Leave a comment below 🙂
