http://www.care2.com/greenliving/green-travel-tips-2.html
Green Travel Tips
Do you leave small footprints while you travel? More and more hotels are stepping up and making the protection of the environment a priority for travelers.
The California Green Lodging Program provides the dirty on the hotels industry:
• Average-sized hotels purchase more products in one week than 100 families do in a year.
• Waste generation can be as high as 30 pounds per room per day.
• Hospitality industry spends $3.7 billion a year on energy. Electricity use accounts for 60-70 percent of the utility costs of a typical hotel.
• Two percent of California’s food waste comes from the hotel and lodging industry (112,000 tons per year).
• Typical hotels use 218 gallons of water per day per occupied room.
Whether you travel for business or pleasure, here’s some tips for greening up your travel from Green Hotels.
Before you leave home:
• Turn water heater to “Vacation” or lowest setting.
• Turn off AC/heat or adjust the thermostat to protect plants, etc.
• Turn water off at outside connection (to prevent flooding should a pipe break while you’re gone). When you return, turn on the water slowly and check for problems.
• Appliances, such as TVs and cable converter boxes, should be unplugged because they can draw or “leak” as much as 40 watts per hour even when they’re off.
• Turn icemaker off (lift wire) to prevent flooding should it break while you’re away.
• Lower the temperature of waterbed heaters at least ten degrees.
Stop your newspaper. You may be able to donate it to a school.
• Purchase electronic-tickets for airline travel whenever possible. Less waste. If paper tickets are lost, they may cost $75-100 to have replaced.
While you are traveling:
• Enjoy walking tours.
• Use public transportation when available.
• Use the hotel van instead of renting a car.
• Use the bus or local transit system.
• Share taxis. Less pollution, and you can leave the driving to others.
• If you’re driving, turn your motor off when idling. Encourage tour/bus drivers to turn the motor off when idling.
Hotel Stays:
• Participate in hotel linen programs, or let the hotel know that it’s not necessary to change your sheets and towels every day.
• To keep track of which towel belongs to which family member, pack a handful of safety pins and small colored beads. Attach a pin and bead to each towel, using a designated color for each family member. Remove the pins before checkout.
• Reduce the amount of water used for bathing or showering.
When you leave your hotel room, turn off the AC/heat, lights, TV and radio. Close the drapes.
• Participate in hotel recycling programs by placing recyclables in appropriate bins.
• Carry a bag with you to carry dirty laundry home.
• Leave little bottles of amenities in the guestroom if unopened.
• Pack a permanent marker and write each person’s name on the cups in the hotel bathroom.
• Keep bar soap wrappers and take used bars of soap home.
• Let hotel management know, by speaking directly to management or writing them a note, that you want them to conserve and that you want to participate.
• Patronize hotels, airlines, tour operators who support “greening” programs.
• Instead of leaving bathroom lights (and fans) on all night, pack nightlights for hotel stays.
• If the hotel provides complimentary newspapers, pass yours on to someone else, or leave it in the lobby for another reader. Ask the hotel to see that it’s recycled.
• Be sure to turn off exercise equipment, sauna, whirlpool, Jacuzzi or tennis court lights when you’re through.
• Check out of the hotel via the hotel’s electronic program available on the TV in some hotels. You can view your bill, approve it, and help reduce paperwork.
How do you green your travel?
Ronnie Citron-Fink lives in New York with her husband, two children (when they come home to the nest), two dogs and a cat. Ronnie is a teacher and a writer. She has been a contributing writer for Family Fun magazine. She currently writes articles about education and home design. Her writings are in four books including Family Fun Home and Some Delights of the Hudson Valley.
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add your comment »Perhaps the greenest travel of all is opting out of it when you can. Not when it comes to personal travel of course, but business travel. Companies are increasingly turning to web conferencing for virtual meetings and shrinking their carbon footprint in the process. It's especially helpful to use a web conferencing provider that actually calculates your carbon savings for you. Like iLinc. Based on the location of each participant, it calculates how much carbon emissions were saved from not traveling to the meeting facilitator's city. You can see a demo and try it for free at http://www.ilinc.com.
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Perhaps the greenest travel of all is opting out of it when you can. Not when it comes to personal travel of course, but business travel. Companies are increasingly turning to web conferencing for virtual meetings and shrinking their carbon footprint in the process. It's especially helpful to use a web conferencing provider that actually calculates your carbon savings for you. Like iLinc. Based on the location of each participant, it calculates how much carbon emissions were saved from not traveling to the meeting facilitator's city. You can see a demo and try it for free at http://www.ilinc.com.
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Perhaps the greenest travel of all is opting out of it when you can. Not when it comes to personal travel of course, but business travel. Companies are increasingly turning to web conferencing for virtual meetings and shrinking their carbon footprint in the process. It's especially helpful to use a web conferencing provider that actually calculates your carbon savings for you. Like iLinc. Based on the location of each participant, it calculates how much carbon emissions were saved from not traveling to the meeting facilitator's city. You can see a demo and try it for free at http://www.ilinc.com.
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Great article. Great suggestions of green things to do while you are on vacation, but also things to do around the house before you leave - reducing your carbon footprint all the way around! LOVE IT!
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Thanks, Nikki for these important additions. I couldn’t agree with you more!
Ronnie
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True Green Travel (aka Responsible Travel) also entails respecting and supporting your host community in many different ways. Patronize businesses that are actively involved in protecting and celebrating their cultural and natural heritage. Find out what they are doing and participate. Enjoy the fresh and local food, customs and festivals – is that not a huge part of the reason to venture away from home? Know that imported entertainment such as golf courses and swimming pools and food (also junk) can damage the local cultural and natural heritage and global community. Consider the water and air pollution, for starters. The bottom line is to respect the cultural differences of your host communities and understand that your travel choices can either benefit or severely damage communities and their environment. Awareness, compassion and common sense make Green Travel easy. Research before you go to be aware of the issues and become part of the solution to helping to preserve our world's diverse cultural and natural heritage for generations to come.
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