In my opinion,  you can never have too many tips about ways to travel green. So when one of our Perceptive Travelers sent through this guest post, I just had to share it with everyone…

5 Tips for the Everyday Traveler Going Green
 by Jennifer Gregory from On the Go Travel Blog.

 I have a secret. The concept of “going green” was, at one point, incredibly scary to me. As a child I loved being outdoors, hiking and camping, but never considered whether or not my actions were having an impact on the environment. After all, my young persona was invincible – surely the earth was invincible, too?

Apparently, such is not the case. As I have grown older I’ve watched the world slowly growing into one that is more conscious of the environment. We’re taking steps to lessen our impact on global warming, save our natural resources, and live less wasteful lives. But, while my compost pile in the backyard is great for home use, I quickly realized that those less familiar with natural methods of conservation might have a little more trouble implementing these concepts on the road than they would at home.

So, while you may not be able to do everything you do at home while out and about, here are five simple things you can do to keep your vacation or road trip as environmentally friendly as possible:

1. One of the first things I do upon entering my discount hotel room is to hang the “do not disturb” sign, which stays up until the end of my stay. This prevents housekeeping from coming into the room and needlessly replacing towels and sheets that have only been used once or twice. This cuts back on unnecessary water consumption and energy use. Also, I am only one person and don’t need to use 6 lamps at one time – so I usually unplug all but one or two for the duration of my stay as well.
2. Consider using public transportation instead of renting a car at your end destination. In most tourist-heavy areas, public transportation is easily accessible. It costs less to use public transportation, and you won’t be wasting fuel or releasing harmful emissions into the atmosphere.
3. Carry your own environmentally friendly water bottle. Filling and carrying your own water bottle is great for a couple of reasons. First, if you ever find yourself in a questionable environment you’ll know exactly where your water came from and whether or not it was purified. Second, you won’t feel the need to open up the water bottles you find in your hotel room, which means you won’t add additional plastic waste to the nearest landfill.
4. Stay on previously mapped out trails when hiking and exploring. These trails have been laid out both for your safety and to protect the wildlife and plants within the environment you’re exploring. Make sure your garbage ends up in a trashcan, and if there isn’t one available, carry it with you until you find a proper method of disposal.
5. Purchase souvenirs that have been made locally or by natives. You’ll support their local economies, reduce the impact of mass production, and go home with an authentic piece of memorabilia. Check the labels. Why would you purchase a souvenir stamped “Made in China” from a tourist trap in Mexico when you could easily walk to a local stand or shop and purchase an authentic hand woven blanket for less?

It’s not easy going green, and I don’t expect anyone to do a complete 180 degrees in a single trip, either. Simply begin by making small changes to the way you move across the earth and you’ll soon find that the impact you have on the environment is growing less with each adventure. Have a safe trip!

(Jennifer Gregory is a writer with a passion for travel. After completing her degrees in Social Work and eBusiness, she traveled through Europe, across America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. She now writes for On the Go Travel Blog.)

Following up on Antonia’s interesting post about ‘Costa Rica’s bold environmental move’, I’d like to point anyone interesting in visiting Costa Rica to a book giveaway being running over at Traveling the Green Way’.

There’s a copy of Explore Costa Rica by award winning travel writer Harry S. Pariser up for grabs. This comprehensive guide of all things Costa Rica is a must for anyone considering visiting Costa Rica.

Want to win it? Head on over and leave a comment before 22nd August 2008.

It’s been close to two decades since I tried to phase bananas out of my life. Sometime in my teens was when I first saw pictures of marine life suffocated off the shores of Costa Rica because of the sheer quantity of blue plastic bags afloat. Those bags were the detritus of banana plantations, used to protect the yellow potassium bunches from insects and weather. Like America’s use of cheap plastic grocery sacks, the waste made me slightly ill.

But Costa Rica is turning things around. They’re starting to rethink those blue plastic bags as part of an ambitious environmental project. As the BBC reported this week, Costa Rica has become the first developing country to proclaim its desire to become completely carbon-neutral by the year 2021. Last year the government said it planted 5 million new trees, with hopes for 7 million this year, to drastically offset its carbon emissions. They’re working on news ways of addressing transport and integrating renewable energy into people’s lifestyles. And agricultural practices, such as those plastic banana bags, are coming under scrutiny. My father, who runs a Russian coffee roasting business, was blown away two years ago when he toured the coffee plantation his business buys beans from. With water recycling and shade planting, “I’ve never seen anything so efficient,” he said.

Costa Rica was in the vanguard of eco-tourism efforts, and it’s looking like the country will nab more of that market. The BBC report says that over 30% of the country’s land has been given over to national parks, an attraction that makes nature-lovers like me sit up and start searching Expedia for flights to San Jose, preferably with connections to Costa Rica’s Nature Air, the first airline to work towards becoming carbon neutral itself.

This is the sort of home-based environmental policies that travelers can support simply by going there. But I’ll wait on the bananas until they’ve found a way to nab and recycle all that blue plastic.

Perceptive Travel Blog joined the Green Travel Carnival this week with our post about the amazing World Heritage Tour site. After all, what can be greener than armchair travel. You leave no footprints and use little, if any, carbon emissions.

This week’s Green Travel Carnival lets you can find out about being a traveling locavore at Yellowstone National Park, read about Gorilla Conservation at Rwandan Lodge, and much, much more.

So head on over to Green Travel Carnival, hosted this week at Go Green Travel Green and do a little green armchair traveling of your own.

And if you like what you read, then mark your calender for the next Green Travel Carnival that will be held over at Traveling the Green Way on 20th August 2008.

When getting ready to travel, most of us pull out a map to get our bearings. It’s usually a map of the world, of a continent, a country, a state, or a city and we use it to figure out where we are going, how to get there, and what to do once we are there.

But sometimes you just want more from your map than simple geography and location. 

That’s where specialized maps fit in.

For example, interested in finding out what’s green where you are going?

Then check out the Green Map System.

Created by local mapmaking teams around the world, The Green Map System provides an amazing collection of information at the click of the mouse. You can explore hundreds of green maps from over 50 countries, each of which highlights a community’s natural, cultural and sustainable resources such as recycling centers, heritage sites, community gardens, toxic waste sites and socially conscious businesses.

Or prehaps you want to find out about the location of specific diseases.

Well, now you can thanks to Healthmap.

Healthmap gathers text from the World Health Organization, Google News, and many other resources and filters it down and puts it onto a map for everyone to see. Never has disease tracking been so accessible. Healthmap displays the outbreaks on a world map, color coding the severity of the outbreak based on current and up-to-date news reporting.

Seems you can find a map about anything, if you know where to look…