There are various ways to travel sustainably and still see remote parts of the world, from volunteering in the local communities you visit to selecting eco-friendly travel companies when making travel arrangements.
This year’s World Tourism Day was centered on the need for increased green investment in the travel and tourism sector, which includes fostering environmentally conscious, ethical, and easily accessible travel.
“Holidaying sustainably means being mindful of our carbon footprint, supporting local economies, and respecting the cultural heritage of communities around the world,” explains Natalie Quiney, Content and E-commerce Manager at Co-op Holidays. We can dramatically lessen the influence we have on the places we visit by making a few minor changes to the way we travel.
Natalie has provided her top five suggestions to assist vacationers in thinking about how they might travel more mindfully:
- Select eco-friendly lodging and cruises
When choosing your holiday destinations, pick hotels and cruise lines that have a strong emphasis on sustainability.
A growing number of lodging establishments are making the decision to use eco-friendly practices, reduce trash, and help the neighborhood. Travelers can frequently check their websites for sustainability policies, which should indicate whether the hotel or cruise has been accredited by reliable agencies, like The Green Globe Certification, allowing you to make sure before you go.
You can support responsible tourism practices that lessen your vacation’s impact on the environment by including this as one of your criteria when choosing your lodging.
- Take part in conservation initiatives
Keep a look out for possibilities to participate in conservation initiatives when visiting new places, or perhaps think about making this the main focus of your vacation.
Activities like coral reef preservation, rainforest replanting, and wildlife rehabilitation are available in numerous places all over the world. You may both benefit a nation’s ecosystems and local communities by incorporating these activities into your vacation plans and have an absolutely unforgettable experience.
- Get involved in your community.
Connecting with local cultures and communities is one of the most enriching elements of travel, and the best way to achieve this is by interacting with locals and their businesses.
You can learn more about your location while also boosting its economy by eating the local food, taking part in cultural events, and helping on community projects.
In collaboration with regional businesses, Co-op Holidays offers a variety of touring vacations that are geared toward letting visitors fully experience the places they go. This entails visiting UNESCO World Heritage sites to learn more about the history of various regions, collaborating with local partners to find excursions that let you cook alongside people using locally sourced ingredients, and much more.
- Eliminate paper from documents.
Choose paperless documentation whenever possible to embrace the digital age of travel. Examples include electronic boarding passes, trip itineraries, and e-tickets.
This can lessen the demand for printed documents, saving trees and cutting down on waste.
Additionally, it can facilitate and expedite your travel by enabling you to obtain crucial information directly from your phone.
- Choose a service provider that gives back.
Selecting a travel company that gives back can result in more sustainable and ethical travel, help local communities, and promote the preservation of cultural and natural assets.
Every time a traveler uses Co-op Holidays, we donate to our charity partner Go Beyond and plant a tree through our sustainability partner Ecologi. With a tree planted for each traveler on a Co-op Holiday, Ecologi runs Gold Standard or Verified Carbon Standard carbon reduction programs all around the world, including reforestation.
To date, we’ve helped our customers offset their carbon footprint by planting about 11,000 trees, and we’ve also taken over 100 kids and teenagers on excursions through Go Beyond so they may experience new things. This implies that our members can contribute to accomplishing good deeds collectively by selecting Your Co-op Travel.
source – Travel daily