I think part of the problem is that the public doesn’t give green travel the same importance that the travel media does. I’ve discussed this further on Grumpy Traveller – http://www.grumpytraveller.com/2009/09/16/green-travel-did-many-travellers-care-in-the-first-place.

Another issue is that many supposedly green initiatives are spurious at best. Personally, I believe carbon offsetting is a massive smokescreen that works solely for the benefit of companies of carbon offsetting. I notice Responsible Travel has stopped doing it – and I agree with them.

Biofuel is another thing that possibly fits into the more harm than good category. Ironically, huge swathes of the Amazon are being cut down in order to get enough land to grow the crops for biofuels.

The habit of attaching ‘eco’ to everything doesn’t help either. Many publicised green schemes at hotels are clearly nonsense when put under even slight scrutiny – and this detracts from genuinely eco-friendly measures.

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Thx for writing about greening travel Darren. Unfortunately most consumers still don’t care much about the environmental and most importantly the climate impact of their travel.
For most operators there is little incentive To be green if catering to the masses.

We provide green, local, slow travel experiences as the core of what we do at Northern Edge Algonquin, our solar powered nature retreat / ecolodge at Canada’s Algonquin Park.

Frankly, we’ve never promoted ourselves as green because even most of our guests are unimpressed with such labels with all of the greenwashing that goes on.

What people do care about? Food prepared with care featuring locally grown ingredients, locally raised animals, garden fresh vegetables, but most importantly prepared with care.

Living on solar power and using composting toilets, seeing local granite and bamboo floors are nice, but what matters to guests are bright airy spaces and staff with caring smiling faces.

I’m en route to BC right now for a conference at the Fairmont Waterfront hotel. They are a leader in best practices regarding eco-friendly and publish great resources for operators on enhancing thier operations. It’s good that some conference planners keep this in mind when planning their events. Unfortunately green often costs more and most consumers aren’t willing to pay the premium.

Carbon offsets: the value is debateble. Until we start caring more about our impact in our own homes, these schemes will seem more like a volountary tax, albeit one that soothes the concience of the careful traveler.

Cheers,
t.

At the end of the day, operators will only care about being green in an authentic way when the consumer forces them to. Unfortunately it’s a long way off.

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Darren, couple things…

Tour operators, comparison sites and airlines should be providing an easy way for travelers to donate… they do, not always to offset carbon footprints (which a lot of schemas get bad press) but to eco schemas… all the large company’s have an auto donation that has to be removed. (I mentioned this already).

You said cruise ships produce 3 x the carbon of an aircraft, but a cruise ship should be compared to a hotel and not 1 hotel but dozens, or maybe the MGM grand. Plus a lot of people do not fly to there ship, yes a lot do.

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We’ve had an Eco Strategy for our gites for 10 years now. For us, it is about encouraging people by example. Gently, gently has worked. Holidays are for relaxing and having time and feeling free to ask questions, such as what can one compost etc. There’s no compulsion or threat – just this is what we do ourselves!

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Great blog. I travel a lot as I teach on Photography Holidays around the world but I’m always trying to reduce my carbon foot print. Great ideas here.

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Good post Darren.
Green suggestions work when they are obvious and painless for the consumers (not exchanging towels are a good example). When people are asked to spend hard cash on offset scheme that are (unless you dig around to do your due diligence) opaque and uncertain then it’s natural that they are reluctant to part with their cash.

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Good points from David and Todd, I’m in full agreement.
Look up CheatNeutral.com for a thought provoking take on offsetting. Offsetting is very much a last resort and many of the companies selling offsets are in it for profit. A good option is to donate your offset money to an environmental NGO, it will help more.
Earth has hardly enough agricultural land to feed everyone yet there are people out there claiming bio fuel to be the answer. A little research soon reveals the truth.
We need to all beware of greenwash. Just because an organisation uses the term green and eco a lot, don’t take it as an endorsement. They are fairly meaningless terms which also provide a warm feeling.
My advice would be this. Ask yourself the questions regarding your travel when you make your plans. For example “Do I really need to fly to Prague for a Stag Party, just to spend it in bars? Would a location closer be just as good?”. “Do I really need to fly to a conference? Can I subscribe to A Webinar?” “Would it be better to take a 6 month sabbatical and tour Europe using slow travel than taking a number of short trips with flights?”
Making air travel and cruises out to be evil travel is also not helpful. Highlighting the advantages (and fun) of more sustainable travel is probably likely to change more behaviours. We do need more information though. Which form of transport consumes the most fossil fuel. Where would my travel plans sit on a league table?
There is a lot of information and analysis still outstanding. For example eating meat indirectly contributes to large amounts of greenhouse gases – no not from cows farting, but from slash and burn in the Brazilian rainforests. What about my footprint through webhosting, I was shocked to find out that a server creates as much CO2 as a large SUV over a year.
The positive thing is that these issues are being discussed and we can alter our lifestyle to make a difference if we choose.

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Great post Darren on such an important topic!

I think travel writers and bloggers could do much more to educate the public. It has been proven again and again that the public does care if they are given accurate information (like take the example of cigarette smoking and how that habitual way of doing things has changed as populations become more accurately informed. The same kind of change could happen with travel.

Like most industries though, the travel industry is influenced heavily by big money corporations that have a huge impact on lobbying governments and press (via advertisements and press trips) and they are more interested in serving their bottom line (profits at all cost) rather than what is best for the planet or travel, so have a HUGE impact on the spin the public hears.

responsibletravel.com is a great company from the UK that is helping educate with fabulous sustainable travel options of every kind. I’ve been making a Twitter list of great responsible travel sites as we have become passionate about truly green travel based on what we have seen on our world travels.

If we want travel to be around for the next generations, we must all get more passionate and committed to this topic!

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Great post Darren – it’s definitely a topic that should be on everyones lips and I agree with you soultravelers3 – the public do care, they just need guidance! Whilst we talk about big companies making an impact it really comes down to the little people to do their bit in the end.

Many of the UK B&B owners on bnbselect.com are now doing their bit; from only using locally sourced food to recycling waste, using environmentally friendly cleaning products and even using waste paper as logs for the fire.

National organisations such as Visit Britian and Enjoy England should definitely get more involved – the green tourism awards are great in informing and rewarding the tourism industry for adopting greener practices and many of our B&B’s have now received such awards.

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Interesting. I’m not one of those eco friendly tourists, though. I don’t care about my so-called “carbon footprint” and don’t make any effort to offset anything. The extent I’ll go to is merely to not litter or to leave native plants and such where they are.

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Ive been banging on about this for a while too. The hotel towel changing lark is one of the biggest cons going. It doesn’t matter where you leave em, the maid takes them.

Carbon off-setting? I once did a Twitter poll, someone likened it to donating to the RSPCA so they can kick their dog… and it’d hard not to disagree. Ive not found a provider of carbon offsetting products that doesn’t operate as a business, rather than as an altruistic body and I suspect some people are making a heck of a wedge off it.

I think you’re right though in that consumers aren’t sensitised enough… but I think a lot of that will be down to cost. People would rather go cheap than Green. It’s good to see some of the big players like Abta and Tui taking part in the 2023 initiative.

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Great topic, Darren.

Personally, I think for travel companies, a better way of being green is to build supporting the environment and communities into your business model, not just do regular travel and do a ‘guilt donation’ of carbon offsetting or donating a % of profits – but I would say that.

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Perhaps this is an area where holiday rentals are ahead of hotels! We also have an environmental policy and have had since we started. As well as recycling almost all waste, supplying guests with organic/local products, we have installed wood pellet heating and solar panels wherever possible and low energy light bulbs everywhere, and give incentives to guests who make their whole journey to our remote corner of Bavaria by train – even from the UK.

Personally, my 2 big bugbears about green travel issues are 1. offsetting, which just makes it OK to go on travelling in an unenvironmentally friendly way while making yourself feel better and 2. green travel companies, who seem increasingly dedicated to taking tourists to areas untouched by tourism, which seems to me to be a contradiction in terms. A bit of do-gooding while there is about on a level with offsetting. I think the best bit of your ‘rant’ was the news about bio fuels for planes. I don’t want to be against travelling – I firmly believe that it really can broaden the mind. But we desperately need to minimise emissions.

Meantime, how about a campaign to get hotels to switch to low energy lightbulbs?

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On a personal level, I think it’s good to give people ideas about how to help in small ways. I’m not sure of the efficacy of carbon offsetting but there are other ways to be green too. Travel by train not car or plane.

Use reusable shopping bags – I wouldn’t dream of shopping at home without one so why not reduce Cambodia’s bag litter by taking a reusable bag with you.

On the whole I think budget travel is greener because it’s easier to support local food growers and small hotels. But the majority of people don’t travel in this way, they take a one/two week package with little idea how green or not it is.

We have a long way to go before travel is greener, but at least we are talking about it and the process has started.

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In regards to carbon offsetting, personally I think it’s better to use the same or even less money and do something energy efficiency in your home, something simple like draft excluders or replace an old chest fridge freezer.

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Darren, Another very easy thing to do to reduce your carbon footprint is to opt for 100% of your electricity generated solely by renewables. Ecotricity, is one such provider. If more people took this approach the investment for more renewable energy would be made. It will also reduce your carbon footprint considerably if your electricity tariff is from fossil fuel at present.
Perhaps, you are already signed up to electricity generated 100% from renewables. I suspect your carbon footprint for the year is not excessive as most of the time you use public transport.
You probably score quite high on the Happy Planet Index at:
http://survey.happyplanetindex.org/index.php
Well worth a look at as it looks at your environmental footprint and more!

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@ Margart, if some travels to your home by train from the UK they place more carbon than flying. Train only works for 500 miles or less.

@ Darren, what should you do..support the local economy, that has more impact.

For more information see http://www.thetravelfoundation.org.uk/

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@Nick, why does the train work for 500 miles or less? What about trains using mainly nuclear generated electricity?

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John it cost of land removed, cost of making track, and everything else that goes into running a train. Outside of France who can say if most trains run on nuclear energy? Most trains and houses round here run on wind power because it is the closest source. ( Large North Sea Wind Farms). But that does not mean there buying that power.

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@Nick, wouldn’t that be the same for a ‘plane? Building the thing? Making the bits & pieces? The metal fabrication, etc? Everything counts, from sourcing the timber used in the seats (if any) to the low wattage lightbulbs used in the gents toilet of the office in Toulouse, where the ‘plane was designed, surely?

Isn’t it the case that the best way to travel more efficiently is for more people to travel together? By that I mean that it has to be more environmentally-friendly for 800 passengers to travel in one A380 than it is for three men and a dog on a train?
Re. carbon offsetting. I don’t see it as a waste of time at all. If it’s all done properly? You work out what it costs in terms of what you’ve used in resources, you then plant trees to replace the amount of carbon you’ve used?

More worrying for me this day & age is the amount of energy used in getting your non-seasonal foodtuffs to your local branch of Sainsburys. Here in France, if it’s not in season, it’s usually unavailable until it IS in season.

As an aside, we in the travel industry bear some of the responsibility, by advertising our holidays and encouraging people to take them? That’s one of the reasons we try to do what little we can here – promote best use of vehicles, spend more time on bikes, or on site. To use local commerce where possible, to recycling for our guests, using one trailer load, rather than potentially 15 cars to visit the local recycling centre.

Food for thought.

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@Stu Bradley, Where do you plant the trees? How long do they have to grow to absorb the CO2 produced on a 2 hour flight? What happens to the carbon in the trees when they die?
I and most of the human race love trees, but are you really suggesting that they can offset the effects of burning fossil fuel?

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@John. Planting trees here in France isn’t a problem. They plant trees here like you’d lay a block-paved driveway back in the UK! There’s a constant turnaround of sustained forestry here. I have no idea how long it would take them to ‘reclaim’ your carbon offset. Though we’ve seen trees grow from finger-thick saplings to thigh-thick, 10m tall beauties in four and a half years.

There’s a calculator you can use to calculate how much you’d use though – http://www.carbon-offsets.com/offset_calculators/airtravel_offsets.cfm.

Using that same website, it’s easy to calculate that a one-way flight from Stansted to La Rochelle (our local airport at Tours isn’t listed) would emit 0.07tonnes of carbon, and the offset cost of that works out at 54pence.

I’m no tree-hugger, but I’d like the planet to be in a reasonable state for my grandkids, and if we all just gave a little bit of thought to what we can do, rather than what we can’t, it may just be that the earth will be in a better state for them.

By the way, my background is as an environmental contractor. I used to clean up, using proprietary techniques, the most horribly contaminated tracts of land and water you can imagine. In fact, you probably can’t imagine. But the point is, that it’s possible. Anything is with a little thought, and more than lip-service being paid to the thought.

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@Stu Bradley, Sorry if you thought I was coming across negative, it was not my intention. I agree wholeheartedly with all of the other points you make but disagree on offsetting. Some offset companies still sell planting trees as an offset solution. If you research this type of offsetting on the internet you will encounter some real horror stories .
I used to support offsetting, but since researching the issue, my position has changed. I too want a planet that can be enjoyed by my grandchildren, great grandchildren and more. My last position was Health, Safety and Environmental Adviser, so yes I also know about contaminated ground remediation.
It is easy to run offsetting down. What I actually did was ask you some questions. You quote 54p to offset a London Stansted to La Rochelle flight. What do you get for your 54p? I repeat my earlier questions, as you have not answered any, except to say that you can plant lots of trees in France and that some varieties grow quickly, this I already know.
With 54p how long does it take to offset the 70 kg of CO2? If it is by planting trees what happens if some the trees planted die? What happens at the end of their life, where does the carbon go? How much land would be required to offset the airline industry’s emissions by planting trees? Even the offset industry has been moving away from planing trees.
I do not believe there is no solution. Of course there are solutions. I have posted some on here. How about donating the 54p to research into hydrogen technology or by investing in wind or wave farms?

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@John. You asked me questions – I gave you MY answers.
You asked “Where do you plant the trees?” I answered that here in France trees are being planted all the time. If you want an extended answer, look to the Amazon. Why not replace the trees that are being felled there at an unbelievable rate?
You asked “How long do they have to grow to absorb the CO2 produced on a 2 hour flight?” I answered that I didn’t know. I can’t expand on that with personal knowledge, so you’d have to do a search on that one, sorry.
You asked “What happens to the carbon in the trees when they die?”
My answer – It’s subjective isn’t it? How many trees will die? What size will they be when they die? Will they have reached maturity, or will they fall victim to disease, be culled in their prime, fall over, be struck by lightning, torn down by the wind, be eaten by deer etc? I don’t know the answer to this one, and I’d guess it’d be extremely hard to know for sure.

I’d like to see the onus taken away from the individual re. offsetting, and placed upon the travel company/airline. There’d have to be strict guidelines put in place, obviously, and a process of certification to ensure transparency.

I don’t know the answers, but I believe that by threshing these questions out like this, we may discover some? I just hope that when the world leaders meet in Copenhagen, they’ll be having similar discussions, but with the added bonus of actually carrying the political weight to do something about it.

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@Stu Bradley, Thank you, I appreciate that they are your own answers. If you are interested in this subject, it is well worth the voyage of discovery that comes about by reading the articles published by Sinkswatch.org and following the links to other organisations.
Trees are being felled at an unbelievable rate in the Amazon. There are a number of reasons for this, they include clearance to grow sugar cane for bio fuels, soya beans for cattle feed as well as for the intrinsic value of the wood. Halting this deforestation is of prime importance. Slash and burn is responsible for about 20% of greenhouse gases.
We all know that we should only buy Forest Stewardship Certified timber, but how many of us realise that eating meat produced in Europe, that we could be contributing to Brazilian forest destruction?
The environment is an extremely complex subject with no easy answers, except of course that cutting down on fossil fuel consumption is the right thing to do. Offsetting does not provide the answers, it does not tackle the problem of carbon intensive transport it merely exports it elsewhere.

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not checking as often as I used to but here is the answer to the train/plane queston

Scientific American reports. A new study shows that although planes emit three times more greenhouse gasses per passenger per mile than trains, the industrial emissions necessary to rail infrastructure makes the environmental damage equal.

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@nick The bus has a lower carbon footprint than the train. Rail is the best land borne transport option for freight.

The 500 miles distance is in my opinion erroneous as connecting all the rail services connecting the cities with airports would give a European wide rail network anyway and the infrastructure envisions would have already been accounted for.

Also oil is a finite resource, when its gone there is no viable replacement for aviation fuel. Bio fuel is a distraction, we do not have enough agricultural land to support bio fuel production and feed us all.

Therefore rail will be required for long distance travel in the future. Why do you think Warren Buffett is investing in American Railway companies? Surely its not to lose his billions.

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@ John, you right..rail is best land borne transport option for freight and living in a country with a good bus network it is the best option for passengers. As to connecting airports the european network already does.

But the whole set up needs to be changed not just transport but beyond. Power is the queston and where it comes from, solve that and you solve a lot. As to rail already being accounted for, you still have to replace the track and build new trains and still cuts out land from growing anything (as track bed is kept plant free on top of stations/yards etc.).

I do not claim to be green, just something that intrests me and I try and do my bit, such as car sharing when I can not use bus. That has got 1 car off the road and cut bills.

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