What Does Green Travel Mean?

The terms green travel, eco travel, and green tourism are basically interchangeable. The concepts don’t necessarily refer to vacations with a concentration on nature or wilderness. In fact, green travel can take you anywhere from the Australian Outback to the bustling cities of the U.S.A. and Europe.

To become a green traveler, you simply need to incorporate the basic ideals of green living into your travelling experience. For instance, if you are mindful of recycling at home, you will want to carry that habit over into your traveling and be careful to recycle wherever it is you might journey. Perhaps take a bicycle tour instead of a bus tour, and leave a lighter carbon footprint on the place you are visiting. Don’t litter when visiting someone else’s country, city, or place.

There is also a social context to green travel. You don’t want to do anything that would negatively impact on the eco-structure of the place you are visiting, and neither would you want to do anything that has a negative cultural impact, as well. Be respectful and mindful of tradition and cultural practices. Many societies outside of our own have time honored methods of doing things that differ vastly from ours. Before you visit a foreign place, educate yourself about the traditions and heritage of that region. Green travel extends to socially aware travel. It’s a natural crossroads.

Green travel seeks to turn the negative effects of tourism into something more positive. Travel and touring can be beneficial to a location’s economy and disastrous to its eco-system at the same time. This is particularly important to remember when visiting nature sites. An eco- traveler does everything he or she can to enhance their positive impact and eliminate the negative impact of their visit. Like taking a hiking tour instead of a driving tour, being sure to leave the location as clean or cleaner than when you arrived, purchasing mementos from native artisans instead of purchasing factory-made items from fancy gift shops.

If your idea of eco travel, however, is to experience nature or wilderness, then you may want to visit some of the world’s most exotic green travel destinations, which include:

• Madre De Dios, Peru – Rainforest conservation groups promote ecotourism to the area in the hope of creating an economy that depends upon the rainforest remaining healthy and intact.
• Dubai – The ecotourism industry in Dubai helps to protect the desert habitat and the species that live in it, like the exotic Arabian oryx, a large white antelope that was once close to extinction.
• Great Bear Forest In British Columbia, Canada – A global ecological treasure, this coastal forest extends for 250 miles and is home to rare and exotic bird species.
• The Galapagos Islands – Visitors to the Galapagos are accompanied at all times by an accredited park ranger to ensure that you enjoy the natural beauty of the islands and the threatened wildlife that inhabits these without causing damage to their environment.
• Kerala, India – Known as ‘God’s Own Country’ and one of the most sought-after destinations in Asia, boasting some of the richest biodiversity on the planet.
• Costa Rica – Costa Rica is one of the world’s most sought-after eco-travel destinations, with hundreds of companies that specialize in providing sustainable services.
• New Zealand – One of the most beautiful places on earth, this isolated island country draws ecotourists in droves and engages in environmentally and culturally sensitive tourism strategies and practices at local community, private business and government levels.

Adequate planning can ensure a fantastic green travel experience. In this day and age, all types of eco-friendly options are available to travellers who are willing to plan ahead. You can start your green travel by planning to offset your carbon emissions from air travel. Some airlines, like British Airways, offer you the opportunity to offset the carbon footprint of your trip by making a donation based upon your flight plan. These donations are then made to eco-friendly technologies like hydroelectric production or solar production. Such an offset will generally cost you anywhere from $10 to $50 depending on your flight.

The next thing you might want to consider doing while making your green travel plans is to book lodgings at an environmentally friendly hotel or hostel. There are more and more places to stay that will give you green travel options and they can easily be found on the Internet while planning your trip.

Lastly, try to book activities that are earth friendly rather than not.

These are just a few easy ways that can help make your next holiday a green travel experience.

If you are interested in learning more about ways to go green, save money and help the planet, go to www.FreeTipsForGoingGreen.com and subscribe to receive a FREE email daily containing great green living tips for making your home, office and life greener and more eco friendly. For more details, visit Eco Tourism

Technorati Tags:: green travel

Will you still be able to see the beauty that is the coral reef?

We have wondered when we would start to lose some of the worlds wonders, maybe we need to do something about it. How long will we have all the coral reefs over the world and what’s causing them to vanish? Everybody knows of something that is affecting the coral reefs, but not everything is so clear, somethings we need to find out about.

 

Interestingly the Caribbean contains just over 20% of the world’s coral reef and there is a huge amount of damage being done to it. Honduras is a place where they grow several different plantains including bananas, these require a lot of fertilizer. It is important to realise that the fertilizer used contains nutrients that are damaging to fish and coral. Fertilizer and erosion are the two biggest culprits for damage to the coral reef in this area and they are both caused by farming, tree felling and building of new properties. But the main thing we don’t really realise is that fish are massively important to the coral reefs. Fish provide coral with the necessary grooming that it needs, this takes off bacteria that damage the coral and keep it clean, they also eat seaweed, and seaweed suffocates coral and any other plants around it by drawing in all the oxygen.

 

Apparently fish have dropped in population rates by around 70-95%, a massive fall. Fishing too much isn’t just detremental to our food supply; it is decreasing the corals chance to survive.

 

Another problem is an obvious one, Global Warming. This is the big one, rises in global warming have created acids in the sea and reduced the amount of Aragonite. This is a carbonate mineral that coral requires to stay alive and even begin growth. It is said that in about 40 years the acid levels will be too high to sustain coral and it will stop growing.

 

However there are few things that we can do to try and help. There are some proactive schemes around that allow us to get are hands dirty and have a good time. If you do go on luxury holidays or Caribbean holidays you could have the option to go and volunteer for a coral clean up operation, where you can help clean coral underwater or on the shore. This would have to be some of the best volunteer work you could, diving with the fish and doing your bit.

 

Also if you go fishing around coral, try not to drop anchor, you will tear the coral apart and damage anything living around it

 

So if your thinking about going abroad or maybe somewhere tropical, maybe some of you want to have weddings abroad, it might be a good idea to get there as soon as you can. If you want you could chip in with the divers and help the coral survive, you never know how much longer it will be around.

 

Technorati Tags:: Caribbean holidays, coral reef, global climate, holidays, luxury holidays, Travel, weddings abroad