Think Green While Planning Your Next Trip
Spring break will be here before you know it, so get to planning your next vacation! Practicing a zero-waste and eco-friendly lifestyle at home is easy, but as soon as you leave your green tools and routine behind to go on a trip, it becomes a lot more complicated trying to stick to your lifestyle while hitting the open skies or roadways. Single-use plastic items tend to be everywhere while traveling, but with simple tricks and tools travelers can avoid piling up their waste and leaving a major footprint.
Here are some tips from Sandra Ann Harris, social entrepreneur and founder of ECOlunchbox, for turning your next travel excursion into a green one;
- Green travels start with researching & planning. When booking a flight, try to search for a non-stop one that can help lower the plane’s carbon emissions caused from taking off and landing. If your destination is within a reasonable driving distance, think about road tripping and possibly renting a hybrid or electric vehicle to cut down on emissions. Once you got your form of transportation figured out, check out hotel options and look for properties that have been certified by the U.S. Green Building Council as a sustainable and eco-friendly property.
- Reusable products are your travel buddies. Buying a bag of trail mix at the airport will cost you an arm AND a leg. Not to mention all of the plastic packaging that will end up in the trash. Invest in sturdy, travel-friendly containers, like the Seal Cups that feature leak-proof silicone lids, that allow you to pack your own snacks. Once you get to your destination, continue to use your containers to pack your own snacks for adventures. An added bonus: the Seal Cups are also ideal for collecting shells or other mementos and bringing them back home! A reusable, stainless steel water bottle and/or coffee tumbler is also a must to cut down on plastic water bottle and paper coffee cup usage. Also, look into purchasing small, refillable bottles to pour your own shampoo and cosmetics into instead of purchasing the plastic travel-seized toiletries.
- Pack and use your green knowledge. Most of the eco-friendly and green practices that you use at home can be put into effect on your trip. Even though that oversized tub is appealing, opt to take showers instead and make sure to hang up your towels at the hotel as a sign that you would like to reuse it another day instead of housekeepers replenishing them every day. Same with the bedding, usually hotels have a note card or sign in the room that let you know the steps to take to let your housekeeper know whether or not you want fresh bedding. Make sure to turn off the lights, TV and other energy-sucking appliances that you would normally turn off every time you leave your own home.
- Volunteer or give back to the place you are visiting. If you have a day or two to spare at your destination, look into volunteer organizations and partake in a beach or park cleanup day to give back to the place you came to visit. If there are no programs available on the days that you will be there, you can bring along small bags to pick up trash while you go for a hike or spend the day at the beach.
Sandra Ann Harris is the founder and president of ECOlunchbox, a mission-based consumer products company that focuses on eco-friendly lunchware. She started the company at her kitchen counter in 2009 during a time when there were hardly any discussions about BPA, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the massive pollution in oceans. To date, the company has sold over 600,000 containers, which has been shown through a study to have helped avert tens of millions of pieces of trash from landfills and oceans. Sandra began her career as an investigative journalist and spent time as a humanitarian worker in Vietnam working on a variety of projects including: water and sanitation, infant and maternal health, construction of schools and many others. Sandra credits her diverse background in helping her bring authenticity and wisdom to the creation of ECOlunchbox and its products. To learn more about ECOlunchbox visit ECOlunchboxes.com and follow the company on Facebook and Instagram.