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Tag: climate change

traveler sustainable travel

7 Tips on How to Become a Sustainable Traveler

Becoming a sustainable and more eco conscious traveler is easy. As many countries relax their travel entry restrictions due to the declining rate of COVID cases, many of us are starting to plan international travel with family and bring more normalcy to our lifestyle.

 

Parallel to this growing pent-up demand for travel, awareness about climate change continues to heighten. The most recent Global Climate Summit, COP 26, which was held in Glasgow Scotland in 2021 reminded us of the urgency of climate change and the impact of global warming. 

 

With this in the forefront of many people’s minds, some of us can’t help to think about how important it is for us to do our part in contributing to reducing our carbon footprint. This extends to how we travel. Many businesses in the travel industry are continuing to transition towards more sustainable services from airlines to hotels. They are working to do their part to promote an eco-friendly way of doing business. 

 

In the meantime, consumers can do their part by being aware of the choices they make when traveling. Here are 10 tips on how to become a more sustainable traveler. 

 

1. Choose a transportation mode that has less carbon emissions

In 2019 (pre-pandemic), we produced about 915 million tonnes of CO2 worldwide through flights. Aviation is responsible for 12% of the total carbon emissions from all transport sources while automobiles account for about 74%. When planning your next travel adventure, you might want to review how your chosen mode of transportation will impact the environment.

 

While a low carbon emission vacation like rowing a canoe or riding a bike may not be the most ideal or practical mode of transportation, consider the overall impact of all your planned vacations for the year and perhaps make some adjustments with this in mind.

 

2. Bring Your Own Reusable Toiletry Containers or Bottles

 

An easy way to be more sustainable in your travel is to replace any plastic products you already use as part of your travel kit, like containers and toiletries, with eco-friendly ones made of glass or bamboo. When traveling, bring your own reusable, refillable containers for your liquids like shampoo, conditioner, lotions and shower gel. If the hotel offers bulk liquid hair products, just refill your containers with them.

 

If you find plastic toiletry kits offered at the hotels you are staying in, don’t use them or take them. Using and taking them contributes to the plastic pollution problem because they end up in the landfill. If you use the liquid partially, they will get discarded by housekeeping. So, resist using these even though they are free to take.

traveler sustainable travel

 

3. Choose a hotel or accommodation who are part of the Green Key program

If you want to support hotels and resorts that practice sustainability, consider looking up which hotels are part of the Green Key program. 

 

This sustainability program certifies hotels and resorts as being green. In order to be certified, hotels must adhere to the sustainable policies like being more efficient with energy use, reducing waste and saving water. 

 

Over 1500 hotels in 15 different countries ranging from 3 – 5 star level participate. Some well known brands like the Fairmount Group, Holiday Inn, Marriott, Radisson, Coast Hotels and The Sheraton are members. These hotels are certified and audited each year to ensure they are following sustainable guidelines set by the Green Key Program. 

 

4. Replace your personal care products with biodegradable ones

From toothbrush to dental floss and toothbrush travel case, replace your plastics with eco friendly bamboo material. Bamboo is an eco-friendly, 100% biodegradable and renewable product that is compostable. They are also BPA free, anti-bacterial and lightweight so they are non toxic, safer and fit easily in your carry on. 

traveler sustainable travel

 

5. Don’t Accept Single Use Plastic Products

You may be given non biodegradable styrofoam or plastic containers for things like coffee cups, stir sticks, straws, cutlery and food containers. Although you can’t change what the hotel or restaurants choose to use, you can decide to find alternatives. Consuming or using these products makes you a contributor to the plastic waste problem so don’t use them. 

 

Here are some options you can choose to take:

  • Bring your own reusable flatware (stainless steel or bamboo)
  • Ask for biodegradable flatware, cups or cutlery if they are a green hotel
  • Ask for stainless steel flatware or dinnerware that they use at the restaurant if you are doing in-room dining
  • Eat at the restaurant and only order what you can consume so as to minimize the need to use containers to take back to your room

traveler sustainable travel

 

6. Be Conscious of Your Water and Energy Use

Showering once a day may be a necessity but using a new towel for each shower is not. You may find signs at your hotel about being conscious of water use and reducing the housekeeping changes to a minimum. This includes minimizing the number of times housekeeping replenishes items you use in your room including laundering towels. Frequent changes of bed sheets and towels requires water use that isn’t necessary. To truly practice sustainability, keep these changes to a minimum. 

 

If you are leaving the room, turn off all the lights and reduce the amount of energy being used including any electronics plugged in and left on while you are away. During the day, use natural light as much as possible and don’t turn on the lights if it’s not needed. These are just simple things to keep in mind that help the hotels remain sustainable.

 

7. Recycle your trash

Many of the hotels have two types of bins in their hotel rooms – garbage and recycle. Whatever can be recycled like recyclable containers, paper products and cartons should be separated and placed into the blue bins so it can be handled properly by those who have to sort through the trash. At the very least, this helps us minimize the amount of trash that ends up in the landfills. 

 

These are some of the simple things to do when you are traveling to help reduce your carbon footprint. Finding alternatives to taking an airplane for global travel may not be practical but at the very least, you can find other ways to curb your use of plastics, to save energy and water use and to recycle whenever you can. 

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Become a Sustainable Traveler by purchasing this Personal Care Essentials Box.

Let's Hear from You

bamboo climate change sustainable

Most Frequently Asked Questions about Bamboo 

So many are curious about bamboo and its benefits to our environment. So as part 2 of our knowledge base about this incredible plant, we answer some of the most common questions many still have. 

 

If you’ve read Everything You Need to Know about Bamboo and other blog articles, you probably already know that there are over 1,000 species of bamboo in the world and thousands of applications and uses. It is the most versatile plant in the world and definitely worth learning about. 

 

How Does Bamboo Spread ?

There are two types of bamboo roots – clumping and running bamboo. Clumping bamboos have a pachymorph rhizome system whose buds underground grow upwards instead of outwards making it more controllable as it spouts directly up from the ground. Running bamboo has a leptomorph rhizome system which grows laterally underground pushing through the soil with new rhizomes growing perpendicularly to its parent rhizome.. The running bamboo can spread as far as 20 feet underground from its original parent rhizome and can spread as much as 3 to 5 feet per year.

bamboo climate change sustainable

Why Does Bamboo Grow So Fast? 

Certain species of bamboo, like the moso bamboo, can grow as fast as 0.00003 km/ hr or 1.5 inches per hour. Several studies have found that plant hormones including gibberellin, indole acetic acid and zeatin may play a role in promoting the fast growth rate of bamboo shoots.

Gibberellin (GA) is one of the plant hormones that regulate a wide range of processes involved in plant growth. Indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) is an auxin produced by terrestrial plants, like bamboo, which influences development through a variety of cellular mechanisms, such as cell elongation. Zeatin promotes growth of lateral buds.

How Does Bamboo Grow?

Bamboo grows in marginal land with little to no pesticides required. Bamboo stores sugars in its underground rhizomes (root system) and as it grows, it produces fine root hairs and buds that develop into new rhizomes. Each culm breaks through the soil surface as its final mature diameter (its stalk’s diameter does not widen as it grows). The culms (stem) grow to its full height between 30 – 60 days and its branches and leaves fold out from the culm in the next 30 – 60 days.

Because bamboo has high tolerance to various environments, bamboo is a good candidate for afforestation, carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation. 

 

Is Bamboo a Grass?

Yes, bamboo (subfamily Bambusoideae) is a grass. It is a subfamily of treelike grasses called Poaceae. Bamboo has more than 115 genera and approximately 1400 species.

bamboo climate change sustainable

How Tall Does Bamboo Grow?

Some species of bamboo can grow as high as 30 meters or 100 feet high and 10 – 12 inches in diameter.

 

How Long Does It Take Bamboo to Grow?

Bamboo takes about three years to get established. Once established the new shoots that emerge in the Spring (they will still only grow for 60 days) will continue to get bigger and more numerous from year to year as the colony grows towards maturity.

 

What Do the Rings on the Bamboo Mean?

The bamboo rings are called nodes. Each culm (stem) is segmented by these nodes or joints. 

bamboo climate change sustainable

Cam Bamboo Act as a Fire Retardant?

Because it contains large amounts of silicate acid, bamboo is abnormally flame resistant and could curb forest fires. Making clumping bamboo a part of a tropical reforestation effort could be beneficial to reducing future instances of wildfires.

 

Can Bamboo Prevent Soil Erosion?

Because bamboo is a grass, it has a very shallow root system. Most of its rhizomes live on the top 6 inches of the soil while the rest can spread as deep as 14 inches. Because the roots are so densely clumped, they help to deter soil erosion which reduces soil fertility and contributes to flooding and landslides.

bamboo climate change sustainable

How Does Bamboo Help with Climate Change?

Bamboos helps to mitigate the effects of climate change by: 

  • Absorbing and storing carbon during its fast growth and frequent harvesting process which happens more often than trees, bamboo can store and absorb more carbon 
  • Protecting forests by mitigating the spread of wildfires with its unique fire retardant characteristics
  • Protecting watersheds by reducing soil erosion that produces sediments that block waterways making areas more susceptible to flooding
  • Insulating environments against extreme weather because of its flexibility and resilience in surviving natural disasters including typhoons and hurricanes
  • Providing low-cost, green housing option that produces lower carbon emissions
  • Providing cleaner biofuels that reduce our reliance on fossil fuel extraction and production

 

Does Bamboo Produce More or Less Carbon than Trees?

When plants decompose, they release carbon dioxide. When bamboo is actively managed (harvested), farmers will harvest the mature bamboo culms before they decay, so the total amount of carbon stored by the ecosystem increases as new culms emerge faster than they decay resulting in more carbon sequestered in subsequent years. Harvesting bamboo culms doesn’t kill the plant and the extensive rhizome (root system) continues to store the carbon below ground even after the bamboo is harvested.

 

As long as bamboo forests or farms are actively harvested and remain productive, more carbon is sequestered than produced from decaying culms.

 

On the other hand, when trees are clear cut, there is a huge loss of carbon arising from the decomposing organic matter and because it would take 13 years before the replanted tree begins to absorb more carbon than its releasing from the decomposition, the net effect is a net loss of carbon when trees are harvested.

 

Why Does Bamboo Release More Oxygen than Trees?

Because of bamboo’s fast growth and replenishment rate (it is the fastest growing plant in the world), it experiences photosynthesis more often than other types of plants. Photosynthesis is the process that transforms light energy into oxygen and glucose.

 

Within the plant cell, the water (H2O) is oxidized (losing electrons) and transforms into oxygen  while the carbon dioxide (CO2) is reduced (gains electrons) and transforms into glucose or sugar that the plant stores for its future use for growth.

 

Some bamboo species, like Thamnocalamus and Sasa Fargesia, need little sunlight but still perform the same photosynthesis process. Because of bamboo’s fast growth rate and its ability to thrive even in partial sunlight or shade, a grove of bamboo can produce 35% more oxygen than trees of the same area.

 

Choosing Bamboo Products can Mitigate Climate Change

How Choosing Bamboo Products can Mitigate Climate Change

Bamboo is green gold. Many countries around the world rely on bamboo for economic sustainability. For thousands of years, bamboo has played a significant role in Asian culture and economy. Bamboo represents the character of moral integrity, resilience, modesty and loyalty.  In Chinese culture, bamboo symbolizes strength due to its tensile strength characteristic while in India, bamboo represents luck, prosperity and wealth.

Its practical applications in our everyday lives are vast. With thousands of uses from furniture and construction to personal care products, bamboo is one of the most versatile, resilient and widely used materials. Belonging to the grass family, bamboo is often overlooked and undervalued. Often considered a nuisance because of its invasive nature when planted in a garden.

But as you will read below, bamboo offers so many benefits. One of the most significant is the role it plays in fighting climate change. It plays a critical role both directly and indirectly in fighting climate change. 

Choosing Bamboo Products can Mitigate Climate Change

Understanding the Basics of Climate Change

Climate change occurs when greenhouse gases such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other synthetic chemicals, retain the heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. The heat trapping causes an imbalance between the radiant energy received from the sun and the heat emitted from the earth. 

The gases act as a blanket allowing the sun’s light rays to penetrate through, but not allowing the heat from the sun to release. This imbalance of atmospheric pressure causes seismic weather pattern changes and the rising temperature in the Earth. The more greenhouse gases produced, the more intense the effect will be, the more frequent and catastrophic the climate change we will experience.

Human activities contribute to climate change. Our sustained demand for plastic products is met with more fossil fuel extraction and production which, in turn, releases more nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, mercury and other hazardous air pollutants. This process contributes to the greenhouse gas effect. 

 

Choosing Bamboo Products can Mitigate Climate Change

Plastic Contributes to Climate Change

Aside from the harmful effects and negative impact of plastics in our landfills, they also contribute to climate change. As mentioned above, petroleum or crude oil is a key ingredient in making plastic. Other ingredients include coal, natural gas and salt. 

The process of making plastic involves drilling and fracking for oil or petroleum, then transporting it to a refinery where it is distilled (separates liquids from gases). All the compounds then go through the polymerization and polycondensation process before manufacturers can use it for their purposes. Throughout every step of the production process, harmful chemicals are emitted into the earth’s atmosphere. The immense amount of electricity and power required to operate a plant also requires more  natural gas, coal and water.  

 

Bamboo as an Alternative to Plastics

Bamboo, on the other hand, is a simple organic material that can substitute for many of the plastic products in the market. Not only does bamboo neutralize the carbon footprint generated by plastic production, but it actually gives back to the environment by releasing 35% more oxygen than the same density of trees. 

 

Bamboo’s high tolerance for surviving on marginal land, make it an ideal candidate for afforestation, carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation.  Bamboo farms are referred to as carbon sinks – an area that has the ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to reduce greenhouse gases. Bamboos are hardy grasses that don’t require a lot of resources like water, electricity or power to maintain. So in contrast to plastic, bamboo contributes rather than pollutes the environment.

 

To create bamboo material that is usable for production of goods, it requires harvesting the stalks, cutting the hollow culms into strips, treating and preserving the plant with a solution of boric acid and lime to extract the starch that attracts termites and beetles. Relatively harmless, boric acid is an EPA approved product commonly used in agricultural products.

 

Once the bamboo is converted into a mushy mass, it can then be manipulated, formed and manufactured for products like kitchen utensils, cutlery, toilet paper, textiles and more. 

Bamboo mitigates Climate Change ecofriendly

Bamboo as the Most Renewable Resource

Unlike wood, bamboo takes only 5 years to be eligible for harvestation, while trees will take 50 years making it a more renewable resource than wood. We don’t need a large amount of land to grow bamboo and because of its quick regrowth, the earth does not lose the positive effects that plant life offers climate change. 

 

When trees are cut, the deforestation that results from this slow regrowth phase, means we are losing the opportunity to absorb the effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. So one hectare of bamboo is going to provide 30% more positive impact on climate change than trees. The more we use, the more it grows. 

 

Noted by the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest growing plant in the world, 45 genera of bamboo have been found to grow at up to 91 cm (35 inches) per day or at a rate of 0.00003 km.hour. bamboo grows an average of 1.5 inches per 30 minutes.

 

How Bamboo Mitigates Climate Change

The choice for bamboo products is a step in the right direction. The production of bamboo products requires little resources and produces no negative externality to the environment. On the contrary, bamboo actually contributes to mitigating climate change by acting as carbon sinks. 

 

When choosing household products that can be offered in both plastic or bamboo, remember to consider how plastic is made and the pollutants it emits before making your decision. Bamboo is strong, biodegradable, ecofriendly, durable, antibacterial and very versatile. It’s a much healthier alternative to plastic and its process produces positive externalities. 

 

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