How You Can Make Travelling Abroad More Sustainable
- Lucy Pummell
- Mar 17, 2020
- 6 min read
Travelling abroad is a luxury, and sometimes being away from home we can slip into bad habits of not worrying about the impact we are having on the environment while we are away. I'm not suggesting you should obsess over being entirely environmentally conscious when you're away trying to relax and enjoy your holiday. Instead, here are some easy things you can do to help make your holiday more eco-friendly.
Where to Stay
Some countries in the world are more sustainable according to the environmental performance index (EPI) than others. The EPI ranks 180 countries around the world based on their performance across ten issues which cover environmental health and ecosystems.
Countries that are ranked particularly high on the EPI, which suggest they might be better in allowing you to have a more sustainable holiday there, include:
Switzerland
France
Denmark
Malta
Sweden
Taking into consideration the EPI these might be some destinations you hadn’t previously considered. While it’s very possible to maintain a sustainable holiday in other destinations, these countries are particularly dedicated to maintaining a high Environmental Performance which could make it easier for you to have an eco-friendly holiday while you are there.
Hotels VS Airbnbs
Despite hotels offering a perhaps more luxury experience staying in another country, with amenities usually at hand, airbnbs serve as a great alternative.
Airbnbs have lots of amazing qualities, as not only are they usually a lot cheaper than hotels but a large amount of them provide rooms for big groups of people to stay which is perfect for going on holiday with your friends.
Airbnbs are essentially a home away from home, as there you have access to living areas and your own kitchen which means you are more easily able to relax there and cater for yourself. It is also surprisingly easy to find eco-friendly airbnbs. The company Airbnb have claimed that 88% of the hosts who use their services incorporate green practices into their hosting. These include using green cleaning products, providing recycling or composting, encouraging guests to use public transport or proving bikes, and even installing solar panels.
Airbnb has additionally provided some incredible statistics for using bnbs to stay in while holidaying. In 2017 guest staying in airbnbs in Europe achieved savings equal to that of 826,000 homes and reduced water usage equal to 13,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. In North America guests in airbnbs resulted in lower greenhouse gas emissions equal to that of over 354,000 cars and waste reduction of 64,000 tons.
These mind-blowing statistics really show the large-scale impact that staying at an eco-friendly airbnb can have on the environment. You can have an even bigger impact on the environment if you’re willing to bring you own sustainable kitchen wear while you’re on holiday, for example reusable bags, lunch boxes and eco-friendly bin bags. Check out my blog post ‘Four Steps to a Sustainable Kitchen’ for more inspiration there.
Food - From Making Your Own to Dining Out
If you’re staying in a place where cooking isn’t an option for you there are still ways where you can make your eating habits more sustainable. For example, going vegetarian or vegan during your holiday could not only be a great opportunity to discover new food that you otherwise might not eat. This alone will have a positive effect on the environment, as going vegan even for just one day will save 3 squared metres of forested land, 4,000 litres of water, 9kg of CO2, and 20kg of grain.
If you are staying somewhere where you have the facilities to cook your own food this is a great way to increase the sustainability of you holiday. This is a good thing to do if you maybe have children who are picky eaters, and even more so if you’re on holiday with friends so you can save money and have great fun cooking large batches of food to enjoy together.
Cooking your own food on holiday also means you can make decisions about where your food is coming from. Going out and buying your own food from supermarkets will be both cheaper than eating out for every meal, but also will mean you can choose which company or farm you’re buying on so you can be sure that the ingredients you are using are grown or raised sustainably. Staying in a place where there may be fridges or freezers also will help your holiday be more sustainable as freezing left-over food to have later or another day will reduce the waste you produce. This can also be applied to when you might choose to go out to eat and come back with leftovers from restaurants or cafes.
As I mentioned above, lots of airbnbs now provide means to recycle or have places to compost which is again another great way to make your stay more sustainable. Wherever you do stay make sure to look up the local recycling guidelines and rules as they are likely to vary from your local ones.
Travel
When in other countries, especially cities, there is usually plenty of public transport options to get you from A to B. Using public transport, such as busses, trains, trams or a underground system, is a lot better for the environment than hiring a car or only using taxis. Usually public transport systems are very accommodating for tourists, and at train or underground stations often information is offered in numerous different languages.
Aside from this, using another country’s public transport systems can be a fun and exciting new way to travel around, aside from them being usually much quicker and cheaper than paying expensive taxi fares.
If you’re staying in an airbnb your host is likely to be able to give you all the information you need to travel using public transport. Similarly in hotels the concierge will be able to inform you on how to use the local public transport. If you’re staying in other types of accommodation, perhaps without readily available information on public transport, Google Maps is a great tool to use with up-to-date information on how to most effectively use the closest public transport.
Alternatively, most large cities around the world now offer facilities where you can rent bikes or motorised scooters. This can be a really fun way to discover and see for yourself the city you’re in as you’re personally immersed among the culture as you travel. As well as this, these facilities are highly sustainable as even the motorised bikes and scooters use solar technology to re-charge the motors. The best companies I know of, where you can download the app to use their equipment, are:
Europe:
oBike
ofo
Lime
GobeeBike
Mobike
America:
Reuters
Lime
Mobike
ofo
Citi Bike
JUMP bikes
Rad Power Bikes
Asia:
Rapido Bike Taxi
ofo
Mobike
ONN bikes
And, of course, the most obvious and sustainable way of travelling around a new place is simply by walking!
Another way you can make your holiday more sustainable, especially if you have used an aeroplane to get there, is using carbon offsetting websites. On websites, such as Clear, you can put in your travel origin and destination, the class of your flight, whether it was a return, and the number of seats you booked. The website then calculates how much money you would need to donate to sustainable charities to cancel out the amount of carbon your journey produced.
For example, if I booked a single, non-stop, economy class ticket from London Heathrow to Berlin-Tempelhof International Airport, it would cost me £1.58 to offset the carbon on my journey.
This is a really small expense to pay considering the damage you’re preventing from offsetting the carbon produced over your journey. In 2018 aeroplanes burned 94 billion gallons of fossil fuels globally, which has highly damaging effects on our environment.
The company Clear use the money you donate to give to charities to offset the fuel that would be produced during your journey. One company they give a proportion to is Redd+ which prevents deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, another way they spend the money is by running a small hydroelectric plant in Maule, Chile which effectively displaces 17 thousand tonnes of CO2 every year through the electricity it provides for 4000 people in the surrounding area.
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