College kids and families across the country will be taking a week off in celebration of Spring! Thousands will use this time to travel the world, especially to warm beach climates like Florida and Mexico. But before you pack your bags and jet set across the world, take a moment to think about how you could green your Spring Break Travel!! There are some quick easy ideas to keep your Spring Break as green as the season of Spring!
Before booking your Spring Break plans, we recommend reading our entry, written earlier this year on Eco-Tourism for some great green ideas such as staying local and green tour companies. But beyond that post, we have some great tips on greening your Spring Break.
-Green City Guide: A great resource to find out which cities to visit and how to travel through them. Check out Planet Green’s Green City Guide. This is a terrific guide to how to travel green in Top Spring Break locales such as Ft Myers, Buenos Aries, Miami, and LA. Under each city, this site explains how to enjoy yourself in these cities, including local public transportation, green hotels, and green dining. This guide can not only be used for Spring Break locations, but for travel all year long, including cities in the Northern parts of the world.
-Green Beach Products: Most Spring Breakers spend 90% of their vacation on the beach. Many products used for fun in the sun unfortunately are not only harmful to the environment but they are made from petroleum bases. There are several great companies that make non toxin and organic sunblock. Also you might want to bring your organic beach towels and beach totes. And how about protecting your eyes from the sun? Yes you guessed it! There are green sunglasses, and they are made of natural wood!!
-Volunteer: Instead of spending your Spring Break downing beers and sunning on the beach, why not volunteer! There are a ton of great companies that provide volunteer vacations. Where you can spend your vacation helping study climate change in Ecuador, help trace change in California’s trees, or track endangered seat turtles in Mexico. There are hundreds of volunteer vacations just like these to be found all over the world. So make your Spring Break really count and help save the earth!
-Tread Lightly: Be aware of your surroundings and be sure to tread lightly. Meaning back your bags lightly and don’t be wasteful. Be sure to recycle any products you use in the area you travel to (especially those beer cans and bottles, you partiers!) Also, a great way to avoid using massive bottled waters is to bring a re-usable water bottle. And lastly, DO NOT leave trash around and make sure you clean up after yourselves. You want to respect the area you are visiting because you are a guest.
March 24, 2009 at 6:08 am
[...] A Greener Spring Break! « Autonomie Project’s Blog – -Volunteer: Instead of spending your Spring Break downing beers and sunning on the beach, why not volunteer! There are a ton of great companies that provide volunteer vacations. Where you can spend your vacation helping study climate … [...]
April 5, 2009 at 9:40 am
A volunteer vacation is a great idea but if one is going to spring break it anyway, why not make it as “green” as possible?
April 15, 2009 at 7:45 am
Not that I’m totally impressed, but this is more than I expected when I found a link on Digg telling that the info here is awesome. Thanks.