It’s holiday season folks! Now our mind is full of white sand beaches, blue oceans and the warm bright sun — or some mountains, lakes or whatever you like to experience during your summer-travels. Enjoying the holiday is great, but just a quick thought: It could be awful for the environment. Whether it has bad effects or not is dependent on how you travel. Get to your destination with an airplane, drive a huge car to get through the country and leave your trash where you produce it would be not that great, for example. Here are some things you could do to travel as eco-friendly as possible. Let’s start:
1. Leave the sky to the birds
It’s no secret: airplanes are horrible for the environment. The carbon emission rate they produce is way too high! So if it is possible, think about reaching your destination by train, other public transports or organize a car-sharing group. But for sure we know that sometimes it is not possible to travel without a flight. In this case, you could pay a bit more for your flight and balance the caused carbon emissions. Do you wonder how this is working? Just visit a page like “atmosfair”, where you could balance your produced emissions by calculating the caused emissions and pay for them. With the collected money, atmosfair supports climate protection projects all over the world.
2. Keep your eyes open
An idyllic walk on the beach could be so wonderful — until you stumble on trash. It’s quite shocking how carefree people throw away their stuff right into nature. The next time you see such things in your holiday, just take one minute of your time and throw the trash in the bin where it belongs. If you want to do more, plan a beach clean up. Bring a few people together, grab some gloves and a garbage bag and start to collect all the trash on the beach. You would be surprised how fast you fill each bags.
3. Sleep well — and green
A comfortable bed is essential for your relaxing holiday sleep. But it’s even more important to pay attention to other benefits of your accommodation. The next time when you book your holiday, have an eye on a certificate for environmental friendliness. Yes, you heard it right! Such certificates exist. One of them is the “CSR” (Corporate Social Responsibility). They check things like sustainability in your accommodation. Other certificates, for example, are Green Key Global, Green Globe International, Green Seal or EcoRooms&EcoSuites. Otherwise, you could think about camping or exploring the country with a camper.
4. Silence and peace is a valuable asset
Imagine a beautiful sunny day in your backyard. Or sundown on your balcony. And now imagine a huge crowd of people watching your backyard or the balcony like it was a museum. Not the best idea, right? So it’s obvious that you should be a respectful tourist in any country. If you want to do something eco-friendly on top: avoid the tourist-spots! Often they are way too full of people, and by avoiding them, you spare the plants, animals, residents, beaches… the list could go on. And a little bonus on top: the secret spots are frequently the most beautiful spots and way more interesting than the “standard-spots”.
5. Local food is good food
In this matter, the eco-friendly rule is: eat local and seasonal! Non-local or non-seasonal foods are causing so many unnecessary transports all over the world. All the large logistic ships, airplanes or trucks are blowing carbon emissions in the air just for our taste experience? There is no need for that! And to be honest: the local food is so delicious, it would be a shame to go home without tasting it.
Originally published at https://tree-coin.io on August 9, 2019.
