There is a big debate in travel circles about the challenges in travelling 'green' - reducing our carbon footprint and our impact upon our natural world.
Is such green, or eco-travel even possible when we need to drive across vast distances to visit landmarks, or get on a large aircraft and jet halfway around the world, utilizing thousands of litres of jet fuel and burning tonnes of carbon, to visit faraway places in Europe or Asia? How do we reconcile our desire to be good, eco-friendly travellers with the desire to visit and experience the marvels that the world has to offer?
If you and your family have been debating this issue around the kitchen table, and are wondering about options for lessening your travel footprint, there are companies that offer travellers the opportunity to go 'carbon neutral.'
A great source of information on this issue is the Vancouver-based David Suzuki Foundation. You can determine your carbon emissions on carbon calculators, and then purchase carbon-offsets through a host of vendors that sell them worldwide. These vendors use your carbon-offset purchases to fund a wide variety of eco-energy and environmental initiatives around the world, from wind farms to solar power generation.
It is possible to be a good, environmentally-conscious traveller, but it does take planning, and a commitment to balancing your travelling lifestyle while mitigating its impact on the planet.
It also comes with a cost to your travelling budget's bottom line, and this may be the most challenging aspect of all.
[travellingmom tip: Green thinking isn't only happening in travel. Determining the carbon footprint of the goods we purchase has become a retail trend. Large retailers like Walmart and Tesco are disclosing 'green ratings' on many of their products. Check out sourcemap.org for information on the supply chains of many family household items, like beds and iPods.]
Photo credit: GoWay Travel.