Green Vacations: How to Travel in Sustainable Style

From: Michelle Kaufmann 117 days 5 hours 40 minutes ago

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Thanks to recent green travel industry initiatives--think hybrid rental cars and eco-hotels--you now have the option of going on a stylish and sustainable holiday. How do you splurge and purge at once? The three most important things to keep as you plan are location, location, location.--Michelle Kaufmann, leading green architect and sustainable lifestyle expert

NEARBY ADVENTURES
The closer you are too home the smaller your carbon footprint. It's as simple as that. So, if you're deciding between Barbados or Bali, the Berkshires or Berkeley, the trip with the fewest miles between you and your destination wins. If you're really serious about keeping it green, skip the flight altogether and opt instead for a visit to the nearest national park. Or explore a major city you've never seen before and get familiar with its public transit system as well as its monuments and attractions.

STAYCATIONS
You can also consider a staycation, or holiday at home, which allows you to skip the stress, expense, and time you'd spend on actual travel and simply relax in your house (provided you can ignore the laundry, phone, and bills).

Whether you live in a city or suburb, a staycation is also an opportunity to explore your own neighborhood and get to know everything it has to offer from shops to restaurants to walking trails.

If you want to take it up a notch, you can always play tourist by splurging on accommodations at a nearby hotel and dinners at your region's destination restaurants. You'll be surprised at how enjoyable--and affordable--a local holiday can be when you don't have to pay in time and money to get to your destination.

GREEN ON THE GO
If a staycation isn't for you, there's still a lot you can do to ensure you're traveling in eco-friendly style. For rental cars, check out EV Rental, the country's first environmentally friendly rental company offering all hybrid-electric vehicles, or Bio-Beetle, which rents biodiesels in Hawaii and LA. Even big-time companies like Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Hertz, and Avis-Budget have greened-up their fleets with a few thousand hybrids each. Some of these companies even offer the option of offsetting the carbon that your rental will emit by paying an extra $1.25 a day. You can also offset the carbon from your flight since it will result in substantially more emissions then your driving could possibly produce.

Then, when selecting accommodations, look for the most sustainable options around the world on Environmentallyfriendlyhotels.com where hotels are rated on a scale of one to seven trees.

Once you're settled into your eco-hotel, spend your days exploring the green entertainment, eating, and shopping options in and around your destination.