These days, a lot of people are finding more and more ways to reduce their environmental impact while traveling. Because, let’s face it, planes, rental cars, hotels and restaurants all have a terribly negative impact on the environment. If you’re looking to reduce your carbon footprint as well, here are 5 hot trends in eco friendly travel.
- Look online for ride shares. If you are traveling distances that are easily drivable, then you should look into finding ride shares online. You can find all kinds of people who are already traveling to places you’re trying to get to and help them out with gas. Not only is everybody spending a lot less money, but everyone is polluting a lot less as well. Also, you will have the opportunity to make some new friends along the way.
- Always keep a refillable water bottle and other reusable utensils on you. When you travel, you’re going to need to stay hydrated, and you’re going to find yourself buying food at various places along the way. In order to avoid buying multiple water bottles and using tons of plastic utensils, you should keep all of these things on you at all times so that you don’t have to waste dispensable goods at each meal.
- Travel with your own towel. You can save a ton of money when you travel to Prague by searching for Hipmunk’s best hotels in Prague, but once you get to that hotel room, you can also save a lot of water by using your own towel. Let’s face it; most hotels go through tens of thousands of gallons of water every day just washing bed linens and towels. If everyone traveled with their own towel and specified that they didn’t want their sheets washed until they left, then the hotels could save quite a bit of water and energy.
- Hand wash your clothes. If you really want to travel light, then your best bet is to pack no more than a backpack’s worth of clothes. You can hand wash these clothes in your hotel room, motel room, or hostel and hang them to dry. So long as you have at least two solid outfits to wear and enough underwear for the whole trip, you should be able to stay clean and light the entire time. Just make sure that you thoroughly get all of the soap out of your clothes before you hang them to dry so that they don’t get too stiff.
- Rent bikes. If you really want to cut down your carbon footprint once you arrive at your destination, you can always rent bikes and get around town that way. Not only will you see your surroundings in a much more romantic, authentic and intimate way, but you will also be getting plenty of exercise and keeping the air and water a little bit cleaner for yourself and everybody else. There’s really no better way to see a foreign city than by bike.