How to travel green — and luxe

By Elisabeth Eaves

updated 2:48 p.m. ET April 17, 2007

It's a paradox of modern travel: The beauty of the natural world motivates many a globetrotter to get out the door. Yet our increasing use of trains, automobiles and especially planes can wreak havoc on global ecosystems.

But even as airlines and some hotels try to cut back on energy use, their efforts have limited impact against overall growth in the travel sector. Last year more than 2.1 billion passengers flew, an increase of 4 percent over 2005, according to the International Civil Aviation Authority. The number of people taking vacations at sea — mostly on cruise ships — is also increasing, by 47 percent in the last five years according to the Bluewater Network, an environmental organization. And the World Travel and Tourism Council forecasts that global tourism will grow from a $7.1 trillion industry in 2007 to a $13.2 trillion industry in 2017.

"Right now there's such a strong trend toward more people flying that the impact of planes being more efficient hasn't caught up," says Zoë Chafe, an air travel researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental organization.

All that activity has enormous economic benefits, to be sure. But as more and more pristine destinations are packaged for mass consumption — Antarctica tours, anyone? — transportation and accommodation, however carefully managed, often leave a footprint where there was none.

Consider a trip to Alaska, where bears, salmon, glaciers and fjords are among the main attractions.

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A round-trip flight from New York to Anchorage emits 2,632 pounds of carbon dioxide per person, according to TerraPass, a company that offers to offset customers' emissions by funding renewable energy projects. While air travel contributes about 2 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions blamed for global warming, and in the U.S. air travel uses only 9 percent of energy consumed by the transportation sector, scientists warn that because the emissions occur high in the atmosphere, they contribute to global warming at two to four times the rate of emissions closer to earth.

Cruise ships, meanwhile, a popular means of exploring the Alaskan coast, dump five to seven gallons of sewage per passenger per day into those lovely waters, according to the Bluewater Network.

So what's an adventurous environmentalist to do?

Lighter living
In the hotel and airline industries, change is already under way.

Kimpton Many hotels offer a linen reuse program, where guests have the option of using the same towels and sheets for days at a time.

If you're a frequent hotel guest, you've probably come across linen reuse programs, in which hotels give guests the option of using the same towels and sheets for days at a time.

And travelers have embraced these sorts of schemes. Pat Maher, senior vice president of engineering at Marriott International, says that within six months of launching their linen reuse program a year ago, 90 percent of guests were taking advantage of it.

Soon the company is planning to offer recycling bins for newspapers in guest rooms and lobbies, starting in 30 big-city hotels.

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