Green Travel Tips From Lets Go Guides

Green travel ideas from your grandparents' guidebooks tend to tout tips like, "Use the towels in your hotel bathroom twice." As backpackers, we're lucky to have towels (it's not that we don't bathe, it's that we left the towel at the last hostel -- after using it roughly 36 times between launderings). Thus, we're thrilled to see some serious tips, like the ones the student travel writers from Let's Go travel guides put out in honor of Earth Day's (April 22) 40th anniversary in 2010. Check out a few samples:

• Pack Green: Not surprising that we like Let's Go's call for taking just one backpack, since we laud light packing -- hauling heavy excess baggage is a literal drag. (That towel we mentioned it? It's lucky to make the space-available cut to begin with; too bulky for our backpacks, so we pretty much drip dry.) And we can unequivocally support their suggestion of laundering in the sink -- that's the only way we fly, laundry-wise. Let's Go's light packers recommend Planet Ultra Liquid Laundry Detergent as an eco-friendly suds maker for traveling laundry, but we tend to wash our clothes in hostel sinks with slivers of Dr. Bronner's soap and don't use dryers on the road, since we usually can't decipher the instructions anyway (yep, those are our favorite socks drying on a London hostel radiator in the pic).

• Eat Green: We've seen some (sometimes literally) sick statistics on GoVeg.com, where we've read a few possibly not farfetched claims regarding how good a vegan diet is for the environment. We love our pollo tacos, but going queso is (1) cheaper, (2) truly can keep traveler's trots at bay, and (3) may be the locavore scene: eating green means eating local, and we're all about that. As is Let's Go, which has this to say on eating green: "Even if you normally eat meat, try going vegetarian for the duration of your trip to reduce consumption of unsustainable meat products. This is especially easy in countries like India, where much of the population is vegetarian. Temporary vegetarianism not only helps reduce the carbon footprint of your trip, but it also makes you less likely to get food poisoning from undercooked souvlaki."

• Grow Green: Let's Go's suggestion of volunteering for WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) is a first rate one -- one of our number recently did this across New Zealand and Australia, in fact, and it was a wonderfully self-sustaining way to go. Get the details at WWOOF's website.

Read the rest of Let's Go great green travel ideas at their absolutely excellent website:

• Let's Go: "Happy Earth Day: A Guide to Eco-Friendly Travel"

Further interesting reading:

• About.com's Student Travel:
  • Earth Day for Travelers
  • Green Travel Tips From 'Let's Go' Student Travel Guides
  • How Can Backpack Travelers Leave a Smaller Footprint?
  • US Earth Day: What Can You Do at Home?
  • Buses Are Good Green Travel Option
• Elsewhere on About.com:
  • Air Travel and the Environment - Climate Crisis, Climate Change and Carbon Taxes
  • Larry West: About Environmental Issues

• Elsewhere on the web:
  • Go Green Travel Green's Recommendation: Best Green Blogs
  • UK Times Online: "Blaming carbon on planes 'is flight of fancy'"

_{---> Return to Earth Day for Travelers ---> Return to Green Travel ---> Return to Student Travel Home}