Green travel ideas from two environmentally conscious travelers

Outdoor activities that are people-powered (such as camping and kayaking) are naturally green. You can expand your environmental horizons when you visit other places by planning activities around the area’s natural resources or learning about the local ecosystem and how to conserve it. Here are five of my top green oudoor activities that I plan on doing in the next few years:

Volunteer to teach English and eco-consciousness in Thailand or Laos

Horseback riding and interpretive nature hikes in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona

View endangered sea turtles in St. Croix

A professional birding and wildlife holiday in East Africa

Dive with sharks and learn about conservation efforts in Fiji

These are my destinations of choice–where would you go? What kind of activities do you consider “green. Let me know.

Back from an all-too-long hiatus, and I wanted to recommend a new site that really ties into a lot of things we’ve tried to do with SimpleGreenChoices. It’s WholeTravel, a new website that’s trying to integrate environmental criteria into travelers’ decision-making process. For example, check out this page devoted to the Lapa Rios Eco Lodge in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. There is an overview of the property as a whole, as well as a list of amenities, while there’s a whole separate section listing the hotel’s sustainability practices. If the biggest hurdle to making more environmentally-friendly travel decisions is lack of information, then this site could be a big part of the solution.

WholeTravel is starting mainly with ecotourism properties in Central America and planning to build out from there. If anyone reading this post owns a hotel/resort/accommodation that fits the Whole Travel profile, you can send them an e-mail requesting a self-evaluation questionnaire and start the process of getting listed on their site.

The question at hand is: if I’m an environmentally conscious traveler, should I stay at a Hilton or a Marriott? Just to remind you that the idea here is that as a traveler, you wield an considerable amount of power with your wallet, so how should you use that power if you want to choose based on environmental issues?

(Before I get into the meat of this post, let me offer a disclaimer. I cannot possibly know all of the environmental initiatives and programs going on at each hotel. I also cannot measure what the hotels’ baselines are in terms of energy use, water use, pollution, etc. I cannot tell you whether one hotel has followed through on their environmental initiatives and the other hasn’t. I wish all that data were available at my fingertips, but it’s not. Until we have a lodging certification system that allows for consistent audits across all properties, we’ll never be able to measure hotels accurately against one another.

Well, you might ask: what do you know? What I know is what Hilton and Marriott have published on their website–their public commitments to environmental values and programs. I have to take them at their word that they are executing these programs, and I have to assume that we, the public, will hold them accountable. I would suggest that if you stay in a Marriott or a Hilton, ask about these programs and what the location you’re staying in has done with regard to them.

And please check out Hilton and Marriott’s webpages on environmental programs and stewardship on your own. See if you agree with my judgment.

Hilton
So, what is Hilton doing? Here is a boiled-down list of their main environmental initiatives.

• Nearly every Hilton hotel (including Hilton, Hilton Garden, DoubleTree, Hampton Inn, and Homewood Suites) participates in the “Green Program”–which means that guests are given the option of reusing towels. Apparently, this program saves 12 million gallons of fresh water annually.
• Hilton says that it implemented a “corporate-wide” initiative to retrofit rooms with CFL lightbulbs - reducing room wattage from 750 to 220 Watts. It’s unclear, though, how many rooms have been retrofitted, though, and from the numbers, it’s obvious that it does not incorporate every hotel–or even nearly that number.
• Hilton seems to have explored how an individual hotel’s recycling program could work and printed their findings in corporate manuals, but there is no mandate for any hotel manager to implement this program. Also, they are currently EXAMINING in-room recycling options (no action yet on the corporate level).
• The hotel chain has instituted HER (Hilton Environmental Reporting) system, which seems to be a piece of software that allows managers to benchmark their environmental performance and report to corporate. This system was instituted in 2004 and none of the information has been made public in any comprehensive way.
• In the UK and Ireland, Hilton Hotels get 100% of their electricity from renewable sources.
• In the UK and Ireland, Hilton initiated a 15,000-person strong task force to tackle environmental issues, which they say led to 780 specific actions. Unfortunately, none of these actions are named.
• In September 2003, 400 Hilton hotels across the world participated in Environmental Action Month, where each of the local branches did something to ameliorate its environmental impact, and they published examples on their website.
• In November, Hilton Garden Hotels (a subset of Hiltons) announced that they would be phasing out use of styrofoam cups in favor of paper and corn based “ecotainers.” They’re compostable, which begs the question: has Hilton instituted a composting program?
• Way back in the late 1990s, Hilton conducted an energy reduction program in 14 of their European hotels and since then “several more hotels were given the go-ahead for audit and improvement programmes.”

Bottom Line: In North America, Hilton’s main approach has been to allow individual properties and managers to take action on environmental issues if they so choose. It’s nice that they reuse linens and save freshwater, but there’s a lot more that can be done. The UK and Europe seem to be taking more action, but on the whole, count me unimpressed.

Marriott
What is Marriott doing about the environment? We saw earlier in the week that they have a high opinion of their efforts thus far, while also acknowledging there is a lot left to do:

• They have a BUZZWORD! ECHO (Environmentally Conscious Hospitality Operators) is the name they’ve given to their green initiatives.
• Headquarters Initiatives: they’ve replaced plastic utensils with spudware, given premium parking spaces to hybrid drivers, and made reusable mugs available. This feels pretty week.
• Their energy- and water-efficient laundry facility in Washington D.C. serves six locations and saves 3.5 million gallons of water annually just on its own! (Compared to 12 million gallons for Hilton’s whole towel reuse program.)
• They’re building the first LEED-certified hotel in Baltimore, a Fairfield Inn that will open in 2009. They built the chain’s first LEED-certified hotel in Adelphi, Maryland.
• The company has led a whole smorgasbord of energy- and resource-saving initiatives, including: replacing 4,500 outdoor signs with LED displays, replacing 450,000 light-bulbs with CFLs in 2006, saving 11-17 percent on their water usage through linen reuse programs, and installing 400,000 low-flow shower heads (which each save 10% on hot water use per year)
• 96% of Marriott’s hotels recycle in some form. Of course, there’s no quantification here, but it’s an area they say they’re working on. We’ll see.
• Most impressively, Marriott is a member of the EPA’s Climate Leaders program, and they’ve committed to reducing their energy use 6% per guest room in the period from 2005 to 2010. This is a modest but quantifiable step toward reducing energy use.
• Marriott has received more EnergySTAR labels than any other company (160) and for this, won the EPA’s 2007 Energy Star “Sustained Excellence” award.

Bottom Line: Many of Marriott’s environmental initiatives also rely on the actions of local property managers. However, Marriott has created incentive systems to award and highlight managers for their environmental iniatives. And on a corporate level, they are taking MEASURABLE steps toward reducing their energy and water use. Next step: waste reduction. We’ll see how they do there.

The winnner is… MARRIOTT

The result here isn’t in doubt. If you want to make the Hilton/Marriott decision based on environmental factors, choose Marriott. Based on the information available, there is no doubt in my mind that Marriott has more active and committed programs to reduce their environmental impact. They’ve also worked to earn many more EPA endorsements for their efforts than Hilton. To be frank, though, I’d like to see both of these chains take a more integrated approach to their environmental impact.

Have you had an experience at a Marriott or Hilton that you’d like to share? Please comment or send us an e-mail at simplegreenchoices@gmail.com.

I’ve seen an angle in the media playing out over and over again in the past few months. Companies’ internal research departments, independent polling agencies, industry-wide panels, and consumers themselves are all citing the same “struggle”: customers like to think they’re environmentally conscious, but when the rubber hits the road, they’re not willing to pay more. The studies are coming out in the paper industry, home construction and remodeling, and, of course, travel–in a study we cited a few weeks back.

I see these stories and the attitude they engender as a real threat to progress. Reading this news produces the very sort of throw-up-your-hands, “why bother because nobody else does” response in consumers that reinforces the status quo.

As I see it, there are two ways to combat this bluster:

1) walk the walk
2) talk the talk

I talked about point #1 a bit a few weeks ago when I addressed this same issue. We need to make decisions that are consistent with our values. The government is taking an increasingly laid-back attitude in regulating companies on environmental issues, so consumers have to dial up the pressure and hold companies to account. You can do this in your everyday lives by making decisions that those companies feel on their bottom line: buy carbon offsets (I’ll have more on that later), rent hybrids, purchase cleaning products from a company that uses non-toxic ingredients, etc.

You get the point. I don’t need to beat that drum any more.

But almost as important as “walking the walk” is “talking the talk”–letting companies and their customer representatives know that you’re judging them based on their environmental performance. On a trip, try having the following conversations:

At the Rental Car Agency:
“I’m sorry, sir, we’re all out of compact cars, so we’re going to upgrade you to a gas-guzzling tank.”
“Actually, that’s not acceptable. I refuse to drive a truck that gets 5 miles per gallon. Either you find me a car that gets 30 miles per gallon or I’m going to walk over to the competitor’s office.”
“Well, we could downgrade you to a subcompact car.”
“That would be fine, but I really wish you had a hybrid for me to rent. If you’re always selling out of your Priuses, maybe you should consider getting more for your fleet.”

At the Hotel:
“What seems to be the matter, sir?”
“Well, the room is comfortable and the service has been great, but I’m concerned about the fact that this hotel isn’t serious about its environmental program.”
“Sir, well, I’m sure you saw that brochure in your room about everything that this hotel is doing to minimize it’s environmental impact.”
“Yes, I see that if I hang my towels back up, you don’t wash them. I appreciate that. Except that you’re wasting TONS of electricity by not switching over to compact fluourescent lightbulbs, and I haven’t been able to find a recycling bin anywhere in the hallway. Plus, you drop the USA Today at my door every morning when I have no intention of reading it.”
“I’m sorry, sir. Is there anything I can do to make your experience more pleasant.”
“Well, you could go back and get your manager, so I can explain all of this to her.”

On the Phone with the Golf Course:
“I’d like to get a tee time for this afternoon, but before I book anything, I’d like to know more about your environmental practices.”
“What? You must be joking…”
“No, I’m serious. Do you use any pesticides on the course? If so, which ones? And what kind of water use does the course require? Have you done anything to conserve water in recent years? Also, have you given any thought to wildlife habitats?”
“Sir, I don’t see what this has to do with…”
“With booking a tee time? Well, if you can answer these questions, I’ll book a tee time. If not, I’ll find another course to play at. Thanks.”

OK, so I realize that some of these conversations might be kind of confrontational, so if that’s not your style, try something a bit more subtle. For instance, when you get to the golf course to play your round, ask the pro what kind of environmental practices they use. Even if you don’t threaten to leave, you’ll learn something about the environmental impact of golf, and you’ll plant the notion in the pro’s head that some golfers DO care about the environment.

I suggest that we all speak up and talk about the environment on our next vacation. If enough of us communicate that the environment matters to us, then it will start to matter a whole lot more to the hotels, airlines, rental agencies, and other service providers we’re doing business with.

So, this month’s Travel & Leisure discusses the issue of whether it creates more greenhouse gases to drive, fly, or take a train. Their conclusion: train is by far the most eco-friendly solution and driving actually produces more emissions to travel the same distance than flying.

T&L’s data came from TerraPass, and without disputing their math (which isn’t laid out), I would say that there are a couple of factors left out of their analysis. For one, they ignore the NUMBER of people who will be driving versus flying. What I mean is that if you have a family of four, it is actually more efficient to drive to your destination than to fly. The reason is that the airplane emissions are on a per-person basis and calculated on plane capacity average plane fuel efficiency, etc.–whereas car emissions are for the vehicle and will not change much if you’re driving alone or if your traveling as a family.

Another factor that T&L conveniently ignores is the factor of fuel efficiency for different vehicles - from SUVs to sedans to hybrids. This obviously has an important effect on the desirability of flying versus driving.

We like to take a more nuanced approach, and so we’ve analyzed figures from the Department of the Environment in Britain which does a has done a more detailed job of comparing different modes of transportation, so we will use their figures and extrapolate from them.

The following are average figures for the amount of pounds of CO₂ per mile released into the atmosphere for each type of transportation:

Total Emissions Per Vehicle
SUV (15mpg) – 2.29 lbs/mi
Average Car (25 mpg) – 1.39 lbs/mi
Prius (55 mpg) - .61 lbs/mi
Motorcycle - .57 lbs/mi
RV – 4.58 lbs/mi

Total Emissions Per Person
Average Car/Single Driver – 1.39 lbs/mi
Average Car/Family of 4 - .34 lbs/mi
Train - .32 lbs/mi
Bus - .48 lbs/mi
Plane (250 mi trip) - .85 lbs/mi**
Plane (600 mi) - .69 lbs/mi**
Plane (3500 mi) - .56 lbs/mi**

Bottom Line:
If you have a choice of how to travel, buses and trains have the fewest carbon emissions. Planes and cars are less favorable options, and which one is more efficient depends on how many people you are traveling with and what car you would drive. A family of four would be better off driving than flying, whereas an individual might actually save emissions by flying.

**One other note: these emissions figures, which are taken from the UK’s DEFRA, do not take into account that emissions from planes have been shown to have a greater warming effect than emissions from land-based transportation. This further cements air travel as the most-polluting form of transport and means that ground transportation is nearly always preferable to flying.

The New Oxford American Dictionary’s word of the year for 2006 was “carbon-neutral,” which gives you some sense of the fad that is carbon offsets. With the success of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, there is a rising wave of guilt about the carbon dioxide that we each produce in the course of our daily lives, and carbon offsets gave us a way to erase that CO₂ along with the guilt. “Carbon-neutral” is just a cooler, sexier, trendier way of communicating the same “guilt-free” consumer mentality that American culture is known for – e.g. “fat-free,” “low-cal,” etc.Well, the truth is, carbon offsets like those that TerraPass sells are a lot more complicated than all that. The principle behind an offset is that to compensate for your own carbon dioxide emissions, you buy a share in a project that is actively reducing carbon emissions somewhere in the world – including renewable energy projects, reforestation schemes, bio fuel production, and anything else that might be a carbon sink or prevent carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. We recognize the value of these carbon offsets while also acknowledging their limitations:

Carbon Offset Pros:

• In cases where emissions are inevitable, offsets provide a way to do something to remediate the effects.
• Offsets are a source of investment for renewable energy and other projects to mitigate climate change, therefore filling the void that some governments have left by not stepping in to regulate and/or limit carbon dioxide emissions.
• In many cases, offsets are a catalyst for change in the developing world, where renewable energy projects funded by the developed world could be the basis of a sustainable growth and development curve going forward.

Carbon Offset Cons:

• Buying offsets makes people feel that it’s okay to pollute if they simply compensate for their actions by buying credits.
• Offsets are unlikely to be as effective and permanent in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as we are in emitting the carbon dioxide to begin with.
• The industry is almost completely unregulated and therefore largely not held accountable for the emissions promises it makes.

Our Bottom Line: Although we support the idea of purchasing offsets from a reputable company to mitigate inevitable carbon emissions, we think that the term “carbon-neutral” is misleading, because it lends too much credit to the effectiveness of the nascent carbon offset industry. It also takes attention away from non-global warming related environmental issues and what we can do individually to reduce our impact and need for offsets. Carbon offsets should be used in combination with the other environmentally responsible travel practices like selecting an environmentally-friendly hotel or choosing an environmentally-friendly destination, not as an indulgence that can be bought to pardon all of our environmental sins.

By now, the environmental sins of bottled water have been well-documented. Bottled water is a luxury good in the developed world, where we can drink water that’s just as good (if not better) right out of the tap. Plus, only about one-fourth of the plastic bottles that we consume in this country actually get recycled. And the petroleum that we use to produce the PET bottle plastics is derived from petroleum.

All in all, plastics are a dirty material, mainly because they never biodegrade, so unless we recycle it, the plastic we produce could well fester in a landfill or float on the surface of the ocean for generations… possibly forever. Charles Moore is well known for his research on the floating plastic in the oceans, mainly because he found a persistent area of floating plastic the size of Texas out in the North Pacific Ocean.

The bottom line? We need to find ways to curb our consumption of plastic, and unfortunately, one of the times we feel we can’t avoid consuming beverages in plastic bottles is when we’re traveling. Here are a couple of tricks to avoid plastic bottles entirely:

1) When flying, bring an empty plastic bottle or Nalgene through security and fill it up at a water fountain inside security. As long as you’re not transporting any liquids at all, you are unlikely to run afoul of security. Aluminium bottles are an even more stylish choice of container.

2) When traveling to a country where you can’t drink the water straight out of the tap, consider bringing a purifying system instead of drinking bottled water. Obviously, this is more practical in Russia than, say, Bangladesh, but if you bring your MSR purification system (a filter alone is not sufficient to kill viruses - for that you need chlorine), you should be able to make the drinking water potable in most situations. Consult the manufacturer to confirm that your choice of purification systems kills all the local critters you’ll be exposed to.

(Thanks to the folks at Lonely Planet for this second tip!)

Whereas the environmental impact of transportation is fairly clear-cut, other travel decisions can be significantly more fuzzy. Lodging is a good example. What is it that makes a hotel environmentally friendly? Sure, it’s great to give guests the option of reusing towels, but what else should hotels be doing to minimize their impact? And how can you pick a hotel that is genuinely minimizing their environmental impact?

The first thing to look for is whether a hotel in your destination has been certified by a Green Lodging organization. Although there is not a universal standard for hotel certification, there are several smaller organizations that certify hotels on a regional basis. Below are a few of the organizations to try first:

• Green Globe (International)
• Terra Choice (U.S. and Canada)
• Green Seal (U.S. only)
• Rainforest Alliance (Caribbean and Latin America)
• Orbitz (Mostly domestic)

Once you’ve exhausted these organizations, you have a couple of options. First of all, you could try booking hotel chains that have made a public commitment to environmental practices, such as Hilton. Motel 6 has even professed to be “born-again” green, but as with all non-certified properties, you should ask what they are really doing beyond the bare minimum to reduce their energy and waste streams.

Finally, your last resort is to book your lodging independently and do your own research. “Research” means calling your top contenders and asking some hard questions. In an interview with MSN, Ronald Sanabria, the director of sustainable tourism for the Rainforest Alliance in Costa Rica, suggests the following questions:

How does your property contribute to the local community?

• What is your property doing to conserve energy and water?
• What does your property do to minimize waste and its impact on the community?
• How does your property promote sustainable travel?

Finally, if you’re staying in a lodge that claims to be an eco-tourist retreat and is located in an environmentally important or sensitive area, it’s especially important that you do your due diligence and make sure that they’re living up to their “eco-tourist” label, because if they don’t, they may be doing serious damage to the ecosystem and the local communities. ResponsibleTravel.com has a list of 10 additional questions to ask, including how many locals (including guides) the facility employs and what education programs they have on local ecology and culture, among others.

So after my last post, I got to thinking. What does it mean in practice to try to reduce your environmental impact (or “budget”) when you’re on vacation. Well, one obstacle is that some environmentally-friendly choices aren’t available in some travel destinations (and stay tuned for much more on that subject soon), and another common obstacle is that making those “simple green choices” can actually INCREASE the price we pay for services on the road.

For example, it’s great that Avis now offers both the Prius and Nissan Altima Hybrid for rent (leaving aside that their “Cool Cars” fleet also includes gas guzzlers like the Hummer H3), but if you rent a Prius at San Francisco airport, you’ll pay $73 per day rack rate versus $63 per day for a regular full size car. A $10 premium. Or how about offsetting your emissions for that next flight from New York to London. There’s another $10 plus if you buy an offset at TerraPass.

One of the reasons more and more large corporations are offering environmentally-friendly products is that they believe you, the customer, will pay a little bit extra for them and therefore cover any extra costs they may have along the way.

Well, the Travel Industry Association released a press release at the end of last week (Thanks for the link, Yen!), suggesting that most travelers want to purchase environmentally-friendly services on the road, but only 13% said they would pay more for them. 56% said they might pay more. However, 76% percent of those polled said they would pay less than 10 percent more. This story was also picked up in the St. Petersburg Times.

It’s obvious from trying to make sense of the data that this poll was poorly designed, but it does get at a crucial question: are we willing to spend more for environmental responsibility? Nearly everyone in this poll considered him or herself an environmentalist, but do our spending habits tell the same story?

Before you start planning a trip, you need to decide where you’re going, and since your choice of destination (and corresponding travel to/from) is a huge determining factor in the environmental impact of your trip, keep the following factors in mind.

Consider Local Alternatives: Every mile you travel in a plane or car emits carbon dioxide into the air, which is just another factor you should consider when evaluating the cost of the trip. Think of your carbon emissions just like you would a high-priced airline ticket. An expensive ticket might not keep you from taking a trip you really want to take, but it will make you think twice about how much you really want to go. When traveling long distances where your carbon footprint is going to be significant, think about how important the long trip really is to you and your family, and if you think the trip is dispensable or it might be easier to stay local, then look into a destination closer to home that might be a good alternative. If you decide to reevaluate your destination, the resources at www.Kango.com can guide you to a nearby destination that meets the criteria for activities, lodging and anything else that you’re looking for.

Travel Longer and Reduce Your Carbon “Jet Lag”: Another way to look at the carbon emissions you’ll produce on your vacation is like jet lag. You probably wouldn’t want to travel all the way to New Zealand for a four-day vacation, because you’d spend most of your time in the plane and you would suffer from jet lag the rest of the trip. Well, carbon emissions follow a similar rule. When you’re traveling a long way for a short visit, you’re contributing a huge amount of carbon to the atmosphere for a relatively small benefit. So you should save that international trip for sometime when you and your family can get a longer time off from work and school. For short vacation windows of a week or less, think about less ambitious trips. Slowtrav.com is a good resource if you’re interested in this philosophy, which they call “slow travel.”

Reward Environmentally Forward Destinations: All destinations are not created equal. Some countries and regions have shown a lot more sustainable and environmental foresight than others. Why not make your choice of vacation destinations on that basis? For example, in the U.S., California is showing leadership on renewable energy and is increasing its renewable energy portfolio standards. Internationally, Costa Rica currently produces 96% of its electricity from renewable sources and aims to be carbon-neutral through reforestation programs by 2030. Iceland has set a goal of transitioning to a 100% hydrogen-based zero-carbon economy by 2050, powered by geothermal and hydroelectric sources. If you switch on a light bulb today in either Costa Rica or Iceland, you cause less environmental harm than if you were to do so at home in the United States, and you can take comfort that you are spending tourist dollars in a place that deserves to be rewarded for its environmental policies. Check out the results of the 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index to see how your dream destination country measures up on a range of environmental metrics. Finland is #1 out of 146 countries, and the U.S. ranks 45^th between Armenia and Myanmar. You can see the ranked list on Wikipedia or you can view the whole report at the official ESI site. National Geographic also rated 115 world destinations on their sustainability and stewardship and published the results in 2004. Another inspiring list of eco-friendly destinations can be found at the Independent Traveler website.

Make the Most of Your Trip: So you’ve decided on a destination. Your next step is to have fun. After you’ve bought your plane ticket and decided on offsets for your emissions, leave your guilt behind and enjoy your trip. Make the most environmentally-friendly decisions you can along the way (and you can see other sections of this guide for details), but don’t let anything get in the way of enjoying your vacation. After all, the two commandments of any environmentally conscious traveler should be to…

1) Reduce your environmental footprint as much as possible

2) Have the most enjoyable trip possible

And if I could sneak in a third commandment, it would be: gracefully share what you have learned with your friends so they can do more with less too!