In collaboration with Travelwith.nl, Carmen wrote a blog about how to travel sustainably. Learn about 10 doable travel hacks that will help you travel sustainably in the future!
Even before the pandemic hit globally, the topic of ‘travel sustainably’ was already on top of mind for most travelers. While traveling has been rather difficult this last year, the created pause in the travel lifestyle has generated a growth mindset regarding how to travel sustainably. You might be wondering how we from the Green Stamp got educated on how to travel sustainably in the first place. To explain this, let us take you down the road of a memory lane.
While we had read some things about how to travel sustainably before this moment, the importance of this topic hit us while visiting one of our wildlife partners in Bolivia back in 2019. During our visit to an incredible area saved from agriculture, we learned about the importance of maintaining our eco-systems, our shared natural habitats, and all its inhabitants. After having this experience, we dove deeper into the topic of how we could improve our overall travel lifestyle in a way we could travel sustainably. We felt there was loads of room for improvement, which turned out to be exactly right. While you might have come across certain travel hacks to travel more sustainably before, we have listed the 10 most doable in this blog article for you!
Before leaving to travel
The first two hacks we share on how to travel sustainably can be put into practice even before leaving.
1. The first travel hack is, in our opinion, truly the easiest to implement. Why you might wonder? With this travel hack, you simply replace your regular travel items with sustainable travel items. Let us explain this travel hack by giving a few examples. You probably all know it is advised to not buy single-use plastic bottles of water in local supermarkets while traveling. Therefore, you can purchase a reusable water bottle, preferably with a filter. This was you will never have to buy single-use plastic water bottles while traveling. The fun part when you purchase a water bottle that has a filter is that you can even refill your bottle during long hikes out of a river! For whoever thinks the purchase of this water bottle is expensive: have you ever calculated how much you have spent on all single-use plastic bottles while traveling? Calculating this will instantly change your mind on what is expensive in the long run. Other items that help you travel sustainably are example solar chargers and different organic toiletries. Have you ever used organic deodorant? Or organic shampoo? We promise you that once you have tried this, you never want anything else. Especially using shampoo bars has improved the convenience of our travels massively. Shampoo bars aren’t solely improving the fact we travel sustainably, they also never leak and weigh less than bottles do. Win-win, right?!
2. The second travel hack also taps into a topic focused on the ‘before departure’ phase. To be completely honest, I personally still struggle with this every single time. Though it is something I remind myself to do every time I pack to travel, I pack lightly. The fewer kilos you pack the fewer kilos need to be transported in any kind of way, which directly has a positive effect to travel sustainably. And as a bonus, this might save you money as well! Because when you pack lightly it is way more doable to walk to your next hotel or hostel and you won’t be needing to take a bus or taxi to get there. Again, whoever said that it would be expensive to travel sustainably, couldn’t be more off, right?
Getting to your destination
While we have just learned about two travel hacks that improve our preparations to travel sustainably, it’s time to move on to the next phase of our travels. In the next set of three travel hacks, we tap into ‘how to reach your destination sustainably’.
3. The first travel hack we will share is one we are extremely excited about. Book a train, rather than a plane! Let’s repeat this: Book a train! We did this ourselves last summer and it has convinced us to do this any other time. Because we probably don’t have to explain ‘WHY’ traveling by train is a crucial hack to travel sustainably, we rather share our experiences to convince you even more! Back in the summer of 2020, we traveled from Amsterdam to Innsbruck by train. While calling ‘Amsterdam’ our home, the train ride started with views we are quite familiar with. Quickly though, hills started to appear, which soon replaced themselves with mountains. We came across the most beautiful landscapes such as lakes, snowy mountain peaks, and authentic villages. This experience made us realize how valuable it is to take your time while traveling to a new place because it allows you to enjoy the transition even more.
4. And, because we tried to not state the obvious with the last travel hack, let’s dive into the topic of CO2 emissions. Not the sexiest topic, we know, but if you are serious about learning more about how to travel sustainably, we can’t avoid it. Some destinations simply can’t be reached by train or bus, which forces us to fly there anyway. So how can you still travel sustainably while flying? Nowadays most airline companies provide you the option to carbon offset your flights. By doing this you pay a small extra fee for your booking. This fee doesn’t mean your flight doesn’t lower in the amount of carbon dioxide while flying. That still happens, and still gets into the atmosphere. This fee is used to make up for your part of the released CO2 elsewhere to help reduce the global carbon dioxide levels. So, directly by paying this fee, you won’t help reduce the amount of carbon dioxide with your flight. Indirectly your fee will be used to help reduce and slow down the rise of carbon dioxide. And in our opinion, this indirect help is better than no help at all.
5. While we are on the topic of flying let’s get to our fifth travel hack! For this travel hack we can be quite short: fly as directly as possible. This travel hack might be self-explanatory but still has a great effect when it comes to how to travel sustainably.
While being at your destination
We have prepared ourselves to travel sustainably and we have picked the most sustainable way to reach our destination. Now it’s time to share five travel hacks that will show you how you can travel sustainably while being at your destination.
6. A world without Airbnb is probably hard to imagine, but what if we tell you there is a sustainable Airbnb? That’s right! Ecobnb works with 10 sustainability criteria. Examples of these criteria are that those accommodations work with 100% renewable energy, work with ecological cleaning products, serve organic or local food, and they all work with solar thermal panels for hot water. This sounds rather amazing, right?!
7. Those who know what we do with the Green Stamp, know that we provide a platform for ecological wildlife projects worldwide. We make sure you as a traveler are guaranteed to book a sustainable wildlife tour since we did all the research for you. Though if you are about to pick a travel organization or tour yourself you still want to maintain the ‘travel sustainably’ mindset. So before randomly picking an organization or tour do your research. In this blog article, we explained six simple tips on how to best go about this research. To already give you one of the tips mentioned: Make sure that while researching on TripAdvisor, that you always read into the reviews with 1 or 2 stars. These reviews will provide you with valuable information about the place.
8. Food, food, food. Eating is hands-down one of the most authentic ways to fully explore a new place. How can we implement the travel sustainably mindset while enjoying local cuisines? Something that instantly helps when it comes to food while you travel sustainably, is to eat the true local food. These ingredients haven’t been exported and have therefore an extremely low carbon emission. Besides this, it’s usually a lot of fun experimenting with dishes you won’t be served back home! Our last thoughts on what to eat while you travel sustainably have got to do with eating vegetarian or even vegan. We know that for some countries it’s extremely difficult to serve vegetarian or vegan dishes, but we have to face it: it has the greatest impact when it comes to saving our planet. If you find this extremely challenging, you can also go down a gradual approach: start with eating vegetarian or vegan only one day a week. See from there how you can build up these days.
9. Oh yes, slow travel. An extremely hyped word, but when it comes to travel sustainably, incredibly powerful. The reasoning behind this is quite simple: the fewer you move from place to place, the less carbon dioxide you bring into this world. Though this is reason enough for us to implement the slow travel method, we also want to address a fun bonus. When you travel slowly you will instantly get to experience more calmness while traveling, which automatically makes you have more time to fully emerge in local experiences.
10. “Leave nothing but footprints”; a classic saying but very (very) true. As ‘Green Travelers’ we always make sure to never leave any trash behind. Besides this, we will always pick up trash others leave behind when they forgot to do so. In that way, you indirectly also help others to travel sustainably.
We hope that these doable travel hacks provided you with renewed inspiration and motivation to make your future travel sustainably as well!
Written by: Carmen Castricum
