Weekly Travel Tip 7
How to reduce your trip’s impact on the environment?
Everything I needed for a month in Patagonia fit in a small backpack that went under the seat in front of me and a larger backpack that was my carryon luggage. My recommendation to used stuff sacks is in Travel Tip #4.
How much luggage do you usually take when you fly? According to Lonely Planet, “reducing the weight of your luggage by 15kg decreases your emissions by around 50–100kg on a four-and-a-half hour flight.” That’s reducing your luggage by 33lbs decreases your CO2 emissions by 110-220lbs for those of us who aren’t used to the metric system.
If you want to calculate the carbon emissions from your flight, check out Atmosfair’s Flight Emissions Calculator. Most airlines offer emissions offsets now, but you should look into how the airline buys offsets. Not all carbon offsets are created equally, but I still think that the more consumers want to buy offsets, the better those programs will become.
Honestly, this same rationale applies to road trips. The heavier your vehicle, the more gas it sucks up. Packing light can save on gas, and therefore on carbon emissions on your next road trip.
Packing light can also make the rest of your trip easier. As flight delays and cancellations have gotten worse in the past few years, a lot of people have started taking everything in their carryon – myself included. Check out some of my recommendations for how to pack light on my Weekly Travel Tip #4.
A Blue-headed Macaw at Mirador Pico de Hoz near the Manu National BioReserve in Peru.
Regenerative Travel
So, what is regenerative travel? It’s the idea that you can leave a place better than you found it. This goes beyond sustainable travel, which aims to do no harm. Unfortunately, tourism has proved to be so damaging to the environment that doing no harm is no longer enough. This week’s blog and articles show you ways that you can actually improve a place with your visit.
Recent blog
Do you want to support reforestation in the Peruvian Amazon? Mirador Pico de Hoz is one of the best places to do just that! The name translates to Sicklebill, after the hummingbird that often visits Yonatan Puma’s nature preserve. I also saw monkeys and so many birds - which are listed at the end of the blog.
The preserve is on land that was logged and then used for agriculture. Rather than continuing the family farming tradition, Yonatan (in the photo with me above) decided to reforest the land and work to bring back native species. Click on the link above to read about his reforestation project and how you can support the effort.
Yonatan’s land is in one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet.
That makes his nature preserve especially important in the fight to reverse the destruction of the Amazon basin. The Golden-tailed Sapphire and White-necked Jacobin hummingbirds above are just two of many species protected at Mirador Pico de Hoz. I loved my visit there and am excited to go back on my next trip to Peru’s Manu National BioReserve.
My eco-dome at Pristine Camps in the Salinas Grandes salt flat in northern Argentina.
Recent articles
Pristine Camps Salinas Grandes in Luxury Latin America and Going’s Worth the Flight.
What if staying at a dome on a salt flat protected the desert from mining? That’s exactly what I found when I went to Pristine Camps in the Salinas Grandes salt flat in northern Argentina this year. Indigenous people who live in the area are protesting industrial lithium mines which would destroy the salt flat and pollute their drinking water. The amount of water needed to process lithium would also deplete the aquifer and potentially leave the region without any water for residents.
Pristine Camps is both one of the most luxurious and one of the most environmentally friendly places I’ve ever stayed. Click on the links above to find out more about this extraordinary place. I also wrote a blog about my experience at the camp.
