Traveling on an Environmental Budget
Posted on August 19th, 2008 - 3:30 PMAbout the author: Viccy Salazar joined EPA in 1995. She works in our Seattle office on waste reduction, resource conservation and stewardship issues.
It is summer. I want to take my family on vacation but given all the focus on climate change, I am very concerned about how my travel plans might impact the environment. So, I sit down with my family and ask them – what do you want to do on vacation and how can me make it “green”? Of course, the first question was – what is a green vacation? Here is the list we came up with:
- It is fun and we can all be together
- Minimizes traveling
- Car is better than airplane
- Biking or Walking is better than car
- Can cook for ourselves using fresh ingredients
- Doesn’t damage existing natural resources
- Can stay in either a tent, a friends house or one room together
- Measure our carbon emissions and offset them
My kids wanted to know if this ruled out Disneyland. Not completely but it did make it harder to go. We would have to make choices about how we would get there, where we would stay, what we would buy while we were there and how we could offset our emissions.
Other trips we considered were camping at a lake, a train trip across Canada, the beach and a staycation – staying home and touring our own city, Seattle. Eventually, we decided to do a combination of camping, the beach and a staycation. When the kids looked at both the environmental and financial costs of all of the choices, they realized that they were getting more vacation for their resources if they stayed closer to home and chose less high profile activities. We decided to use some of the resources on EPA’s website to figure out exactly how much impact our vacations did have – tracking mileage, evaluating hotel stays, and figuring out how much we can recycle.
When I look back on the conversation, I realize that I learned lessons too. 1) being green means making substantially different choices – not just figuring out how to do the same thing using less, 2) my kids care about the environment and see it directly affecting their future and 3) it can be done but it isn’t easy. We are off on our vacations and staycations next week. I’m looking forward to it. I hope you are all having both a fun and green summer too. I’d love to hear how you are making your vacation green.
The Sierra Club has a more detailed comparison of cars vs. planes.
Tags: planes, travel, vacation
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Question of the Week
September 15th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Read your articles, i like your idea to have a theme family vacation.
aha.. i will do like what you did on my next vacation. Thanks for the idea. Lucky to browse and find your article. Have a nice day.
BTW you can stop by at my traveling blog and write article like this over there.
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October 4th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
nice article. lets say to our kids “save the planet” with “green vacation”
manuel
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October 9th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Good points about green vacations. However, beyond transportation, I can see the difficulty in assessing the carbon footprint of a family vacation even semi-accurately. There are a lot of variables involved that may be confusing for the average family.
I am a big fan of the camping vacation, as I believe it is not only a perfect example of a “green” vacation, it’s a way to for people to become more aware of environmental issues, including the need for wilderness protection. However, even camping can have environmental issues you wouldn’t expect. I happen to blog about hiking and backpacking, and as someone who is experienced in those types of recreation, I’ve become familiar with Leave No Trace ethics. Many serious backpackers do not build campfires unless a fire is required in an emergency situation. All the same, most of us will admit there’s nothing lovelier that staring at a campfire on a fall evening in the wilderness. Of course, campfires are perfectly acceptable in established campsites (unless the wildfire danger is high). But a campfire, over the course of a camping trip, may unleash the equivalent pollution of a 200-mile car trip.
One more thought. You have mentioned the choice between cars and planes. What happened to rail? I think it’s unfortunate that our passenger rail system is so inadequate for most vacationers in the US. This ought to be changed. I think it’s going to require the commitment of government at all levels to make that change and build a modern passenger rail system for the US. I lived in Germany for a time, and was impressed with their rail system. A family in Stuttgart can take a high-speed train and in a few hours be at the seaside, and a family in Berlin can take a high-speed train and in a few hours be in the Black Forest. Their trains are very eco-friendly, most running on a combination of overhead electricity and diesel. Granted, we have distances far more vast than densely populated European countries, but we have the potential to make all travel - not just vacations - greener by improving our passenger rail system.
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October 23rd, 2008 at 4:17 am
Great share…I love your opinion…
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