Use Tech to Green Your Summer Vacation

By Sarah Parsons (from Inhabitat) on June 28, 2010

Some folks think that travel is the antithesis to living a green lifestyle. After all, driving and flying hundreds or thousands of miles creates a huge carbon footprint. Still, there are many ways you can tread a little less lightly while hitting the open road . Check out our guide of handy online tools, apps, and services that can help you plan and green your summer vacation.

Planning

Find a Cheap Flight

Finding a flight with the right times, right price, and right airline can be difficult without the proper online tools. Try using search sites like Kayak, Expedia, CheapTickets, and Orbitz to find the best deals around. Some of the sites will even let users set up ongoing alerts, so folks can know exactly when a flight reaches its lowest price. You can also try using Farecast. The site lets travelers input their destination and potential travel dates, and will recommend whether users should buy tickets now, hold off, or if flight prices are likely to remain the same.

Pick an Eco-Friendly Hotel

With all the laundry, electricity use, and excessive amenities, many hotels produce massive carbon footprints. Make sure you're staying at an ecologically minded enterprise by using online guides from Sustainable Travel International (STI) and Travelocity. STI's Web site features a directory of eco-friendly options - just search by category using the "Lodging" options. Travelocity's Travel for Good Green Hotel Directory ranks lodging options based on their environmental impacts.

And nowadays, there are a slew of eco-resorts that cater specifically to the green traveler. Not only do many of these hotels and hostels have eco-conscious practices, they might even be built from recycled materials or give tours highlighting innovative green strategies. Here is a list of 5 amazing options for eco-hotels and eco-hostels including a Travelodge made of 86 shipping containers and a hostel made of an old jumbo jet!

Getting There

Make an Itinerary

Map out how you want to maximize your time while on vacation with Google Calendar. The online agenda lets you plan your day's activities by the hour, and it will even send users an update when a scheduled activity is about to begin. Try getting that kind of reliable service from a paper planner.

Document the Fun

If you're like most of us, you'll be snapping lots of photos of the trip. Instead of printing all those pictures out, sticking them in albums, or shipping them to friends and family, try uploading all the photos to an online photo album. Sites like Flickr, Photobucket, Snapfish, Facebook, and Shutterfly let users upload images, write descriptions, and save photos in an online album. The sites save ink, paper, and resources by eliminating the need for printing photos, and they also make it easy to share vacation pics with friends and family.

Or How About Not Going Anywhere at All?

Sure, offsetting your flight's carbon and using tech to make sure your trip is as eco-friendly as possible are great options, but there's an even greener alternative - not going anywhere at all! Staycations are virtually stress-free since you don't have to pass through any airports or pack any luggage. Plus, they're a great excuse to explore the places in your own neighborhood that you've always wanted to. Websites like Time Out and Lonely Planet offer a ton or resources and information about many different cities, and you can pretend that you're a tourist when you jot down tips about what to do in your own town. Not quite sure how to navigate your own nabe? Just hit up Googlemaps for the 411.

So now that you know how to plan a green vacation, where will you be heading this summer?

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Inhabitat is an online magazine devoted to the future of design, tracking the innovations in technology, practices and materials that are pushing architecture and design towards a smarter and more sustainable future. Written by a young tech-savvy team designers and design journalists, Inhabitat delivers fresh content daily, showcasing emerging work from the cutting-edge of the global design community.

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