How to be a greener traveller isn’t rocket science but it requires a commitment to travelling more sustainably and leaving a lighter footprint, to making more conscious eco-friendly decisions about what you pack, the transport you use, places you stay, things you do, what you eat, and what you buy. It means travelling with a reusable shopping bag, eco-friendly drinking bottle, reusable straws, and eating utensils, and saying no to single use plastic.
It’s Earth Day and this year’s theme is ‘Planet vs Plastics’, so we thought we’d share this guide to how to be a greener traveller and our eco-friendly travel tips, including how to reduce plastics when you travel. Launched in the 1960s, Earth Day is a global event held each April 22nd, observed by many millions around the world and focused on highlighting the urgent need to protect our planet and its natural resources.
When I first published an earlier version of this guide to greener travel back in 2018, we had just returned from Bangkok. Reflecting about our trip to the Thai capital, I wrote in my notebook “It’s hard not to feel like you’re committing crimes against the environment every moment of the day. From the second you’re off the freeway and stuck in the city’s infamous traffic gridlock, you see the exhaust fumes rising skyward…”
“Once you enter your first frigid shopping mall, it’s impossible not to think about the detrimental effects of the massive air conditioning systems that leak coolants into the atmosphere. Some of the most potent greenhouse gases, it’s thought that they have an even more alarming impact than carbon dioxide when it comes to global warming.”
“Then there’s the plastic bags with every purchase, plastic bottles in hotel rooms, the dreaded 7Eleven mini-marts and their staff who slip a dozen plastic straws – in paper packaging – in the plastic bags when you purchase a few drinks to cool down. Even street food cooks and market vendors who once used natural packaging such as the banana leaf baskets pictured above, now serve takeaway dishes in Styrofoam containers with plastic spoons in plastic bags.”
When we launched Grantourismo in 2010 with our year-long grand tour of the world, it was a trip with a mission to inspire you all to travel more slowly, locally and experientially, which for us not only meant to travel in more immersive, engaging and enriching ways, but to travel in ways that were more sustainable, more ethical and more responsible.
Travelling ‘greener’, in a more environmentally-friendly way, was part of that quest and remains part of our mission to this day.
How To Be A Greener Traveller – Our Tips to Travelling with a Lighter Footprint
How to be a greener traveller isn’t rocket science but travelling in a more eco-friendly manner does require that you do a bit more research before you travel about what you’re going to pack, how you’re going to travel, where you’re going to stay, the tour companies you’re going to use, where you’re going to eat, drink and shop, and what you’re going to buy – or not buy.
Being an eco-friendly traveller also requires that you do a little bit of extra pre-trip preparation (see our green travel packing list below) so you can say “no” to plastic when you’re out and about. And what better time to begin to be a greener traveller and travel in a more environmentally friendly way than now, on Earth Day?
Here are our tips on how to be a greener traveller and leave a lighter footprint when you travel. Also see our Meaningful Travel Guide for tips to more enriching travel.
Pack With The Goal of Being a Greener Traveller
The most important thing you can pack is a canvas, linen or cotton tote bag that you can fold-up and carry with you when you’re out and about every day, for any shopping you do, so you can decline plastic shopping bags at markets, mini-marts, supermarkets, shops, and malls.
Another important thing to pack is a reusable water bottle that you can carry with you throughout the day and refill as needed. That means you should be able to avoid using plastic water bottles, which are doing some of the most damage to the environment, especially here in Southeast Asia.
Pack a thermos flask that you can fill with tea and coffee for travel days, tours, day trips, and longer excursions, and for day-to-day urban travel pack a large keep cup for takeaway juices, coffees and teas, so you can decline the paper, styrofoam and plastic cups, and the plastic bags they’re often put into in Southeast Asia.
A Tupperware container, lunch box or Bento box is also super-handy, especially for street food or if you like to buy snacks from markets. Also pack a spork and chopsticks in a case.
Pack ethically-made, eco-friendly clothes, accessories, cosmetics, and toiletries whenever possible.
Reject Single-Use Plastic Every Chance You Get
From the moment you leave home, be vocal and reject and complain about the use of single-use plastic whenever you can, whether you’re at the airport, on the plane, out and about sightseeing, shopping the markets for picnic supplies, grazing on street food, or picking up take-away food.
Living in Cambodia, I find it incredibly frustrating that street food vendors who have traditionally used eco-friendly packaging such as the palm leaves and banana plant leaves, pictured above, are increasingly replacing these eco-friendly containers with plastic bags.
Whenever you get the opportunity, praise local street food cooks and market sellers who are still using natural materials and reject the single-use plastic bags and Polystyrene containers whenever you can.
Travel with a couple of tupperware containers or Bento boxes that you can take to markets or on street food tours. They’re fantastic for storing other things in when they’re not holding snacks and sweets. If you’re a picnic lover or serious street food or market grazer, an insulated lunch bag with airtight and liquid-tight containers is brilliant.
Stay in Environmentally Friendly Hotels
Most hotel rooms have a sign in the bathroom these days suggesting that you can let housekeeping know you’re happy to re-use your bath towels by hanging them up. We recommend you do that, but also check hotel websites for a green policy and sustainability pledge.
Do some research to find out what else your hotel choices are doing to conserve water and other resources, to minimise waste and pollution, and to give back to the community to protect the environment?
For instance, here in Siem Reap, riverside Jaya House River Park boutique hotel has a tree-planting programme, does daily river clean-ups, has a kitchen garden for their restaurant, uses organic produce from Happy & Co Farm, donates used cooking oil to NAGA Earth, to be turned into bio-fuel offers guests bamboo straws and filtered water.
The hotel’s managing director started Refill Not Landfill Asia, which produces and promotes reusable aluminium water bottles for tourists aimed at reducing the millions of plastic water bottles discarded in Cambodia each year.
Eat at Sustainably-Minded Eco-Friendly Restaurants
Research the restaurants you’re keen to eat at to find out what they’re doing to be greener. Try to find out what environmentally friendly initiatives the restaurant has undertaken, such as reducing kitchen waste and phasing out plastics.
Seek out farm to table restaurants, such as Lum Orng and Banllé in Siem Reap, and sustainable restaurants such as Haoma in Bangkok, restaurants that use organic local produce and ingredients of which they know the provenance.
For example, Haoma has a complex aquaponics system that harvests rain water and recycles used water, which is then fed back to the plants, vegetables and herbs that flourish in vertical gardens and plant boxes inside the restaurant and outside in the lush kitchen garden. What produce isn’t grown at the restaurant is bought from sustainable local farmers.
Haoma is also on a zero waste quest, doing everything from using every part of every vegetable and fruit to composting organic kitchen waste for their garden, with the goal of eliminating all plastics and being plastic free.
Drink at Eco Friendly Bars and Pubs
Check if the bars and pubs you’re planning to do some sipping at are making an effort to go green. The easiest thing a bar can do these days to be more eco-friendly is to eliminate single-use plastic, especially plastic cups and plastic straws.
Here in Siem Reap, countless bars and restaurants have replaced the plastic straws with straws made of bamboo, stainless steal and biodegradable material. Another green initiative that’s taken off is the elimination of plastic water bottles.
The most ethical, responsible and most hospitable establishments are offering complimentary, filtered drinking water while others are selling water in glass recyclable bottles instead of plastic bottles.
Using fresh organic fruit, making their own in-house infusions and syrups, and composting organic waste are other ways that bars and pubs can be more environmentally friendly.
Don’t Buy Fast Fashion and Tourist Clothes
Don’t buy tourist clothes when you travel that you probably won’t wear when you get home, such as elephant pants. Aside from the ethics (elephant pants are made in sweat shops), they’re terrible for the environment.
I’ve long loved buying local clothes, jewellery and accessories, as souvenirs, as I’m reminded of where I bought them whenever I travel, but these days I skip the fast fashion and trawl markets and invest in pieces by local designers and artisans.
Also seek our local markets, op shops and vintage stores where you can purchase more eco-friendly, pre-loved and up-cycled fashion, such as these charity shops in Edinburgh.
See our guide to ethical and sustainable shopping. There are also fantastic tips in this post to buying ethical fashion in Paris by a Parisian ethical fashion boutique owner.
Avoid Junky Souvenirs and Support Local Artisans and Craftspeople
By the same token, avoid buying junky souvenirs made from plastic that you or whoever you give them to will probably discard at some stage. Aside from the dubious origin of tourist trinkets, which are usually manufactured in sweat shops, often by children, tacky souvenirs typically end up in landfills.
Instead, support local artisans and craftspeople by buying handmade things, and unique works of art and traditional crafts to keep local cultural practices alive.
Buy from small local businesses and buy local products, such as these beautiful handmade, fair trade textiles in Bali rather than factory-made products.
See our guide to buying sustainable souvenirs in Southeast Asia, which can easily be applied to other regions.
First Published 3 July 2018; Updated 6 July 2024
If you enjoyed this, see our Meaningful Travel Guide, Experiential Travel Guide, our guides to Slow Travel (Our Best Budget Travel Secret) and Local Travel and Living Like Locals, How to Meet Locals When You Travel, How to Be a Better Traveller, and It’s Not Where to Travel But How to Travel.
You might also enjoy these 20 Travel Lessons from 20 Years Living Abroad and Travelling the World, How We Created a Life Filled with Travel, How to Get Paid to Travel the World as a Travel Writer, At Home Anywhere and Having a Sense of Belonging Everywhere and tips to dealing with Reverse Culture Shock.
How to be a greener traveller isn’t so hard, is it? If you have any tips on how to be a greener traveller we’d love you to share your suggestions in the Comments below.
I think you covered it all. The amount of PET bottles alone is insane. It’s particularly challenging in markets.
I bring a bamboo straw all the time, which comes with a cleaner and bamboo container; the kit’s functional and eco-friendly. Collapsable containers are more convenient to carry around when travelling too. Every little effort counts.
Thanks, Cathie! Agree – it’s incredibly challenging in markets. And what’s really disappointing is seeing local vendors move away from their eco-friendly packaging above toward plastic.
“Every little effort counts” – absolutely, and I think the more that people reject plastic straws and bags, the more it will make vendors and shopkeepers think.