Talking About Green

If you’re an advocate of eco-friendly living, you likely have a very organized set-up at home that allows you to minimize waste of food, energy, and non-recyclable materials. However, once you leave home, you might feel that you are out of your element and not capable of living up to your normal green standards. It might make you shudder to think about all the waste you’re creating by travel, hotel services, restaurant services, and disposable items. Nonetheless, you probably just shrug your shoulders, sigh, and then tell yourself that there is really no other way about it.

Actually, there is another way about it. Eco-friendly travel comes in numerous forms. Some of them are more genuine than others, but all of them, in the least, do offer an alternative to the usual trail of waste that most travelers leave behind them.

The Carbon Emission IOU Option

This version of eco-friendly perhaps gives more to your psychological well-being than it does to the environment. It works like this: When a travel agency sells you your travel tickets, you will be given a number that represents the amount of carbon that your flight will dump into the atmosphere. You will probably feel a little guilty when you see this number, and at that point the travel agent will ask you if you want to offset your emissions. Working with numbers provided by environmental agencies, the travel agent will be able to tell you how much you will have to invest in green technology or forest conservation in order to offset those emissions.

While this environmental investment will technically offset the emissions, this practice seems a little bit like giving the environment an IOU, which isn’t exactly eco-friendly behavior.

Go On Vacation in the Third World

Who said vacation and community service can’t be the same thing? Specialized agencies are now offering vacations that bring vacationers to areas where service is needed. The trick is this: you pay; you work. And then, in your free time, they’ll show you the sights. This is definitely an interesting option that is well-suited to individuals who find traditional tourism to be somewhat depressing. (See http://www.morgansrock.com)

Limiting Vacations

A better way to go about vacationing, however, might simply be to re-think the exotic location necessity. Most of us, in fact, could easily find nearby locations that would serve our vacation needs quite adequately. Rather than traveling 3000 miles, you might try traveling 100 miles instead.

Try Camping

If you really want to make your vacation eco-friendly, why not choose an option that will consume less energy than your usual household living? Of course, you could go all out and revel in gear and processed food heaven, but that is not necessary. A successful camping trip can be made with a good quality tent; a flint; some dried beans, rice, and potatoes; hand-powered flashlights; and maybe a few old newspapers for kindling. That might sound a little too rustic for your tastes, but it really is the ultimate green vacation. In this case, you might take a few mosquito bites for the environment, but isn’t it worth it? (See http://www.npca.org/)

Heather Johnson is a writer for Honeymoon Destinations, the leading online honeymoon planning resource. Learn all about the best honeymoon destinations today! Check out some cheap flights to Australia, one of the top travel destinations in the world.