Discovering of our immediate environment through travel has the ability to expand our minds, increase our cultural empathy and generously feed our social media platforms with amazing pictures of beautiful destinations across the continent.
Indeed travel is beautiful but it is not totally eco-friendly as it has a measurable impact on the environment. Would you be interested in reducing the environmental impact of travel? That answer is up to you but in the spirit of COP21, the UN Conference on Climate Change, Jovago boosts the possibility of adopting certain measures that could decrease the detrimental effect of travel on the environment.
Enforcing principles of green travel is important to boost sustainability of the environment. This involves a conscious effort to be responsible with one’s immediate environment. The transportation sector generates a sizeable amount of the world’s fossil-fuel carbon dioxide which is one of the culprit-elements for climate change.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014), transportation is responsible for 14% of the global greenhouse gas emissions as a result of fossil fuels exhausted from the different forms of transportation – electricity and heat production generates 25% of the global greenhouse gas emissions.
Being nicer to the earth by reducing our ecological footprint could significantly lower the amount of CO2 emitted into the environment, this is no fairytale and will take quite an effort from our part.
Reducing energy consumption of electrical home appliances
Research shows that the use of appliances account for over 20% of the energy consumed in a home/hotel business. To counter this effect, manufacturers engage in programs to make it easier not only to identify eco-friendly home appliances but to also save on energy costs.
Since hotels require quite a number of refrigerators, getting the eco-friendly ones which minimise energy waste is a step in the right direction of going green! Electricity usage monitors are also handy in this case – to make even a great impact, turn off and detach electrical appliances from the source when not in use. Smart-lighting controls use energy efficient lighting and also automatically adjust light strength to match the lighting needs of any room. It helps go green as it automatically shuts down lighting in rooms that have no need for it.
Climate Control on the Inside
It may be impossible to control the climate of the environment which is outside our reach but the reverse is the case for our personal spaces. Climate control systems can automatically adjust climate changes in every room of a building.
It provides one of the best eco-friendly lifestyle options for your space. If this is not within your budget, leaving the window open sometimes trumps plugging in your electrical fan/air conditioner. Unplugging devices that aren’t in use also do a lot of good.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Decreasing carbon footprint and helping your home/business/travel go green involves making an effort to recycle some of the materials that would instead suffer a different fate in the compost or recycle pile.
For offices, reducing the amount of printing done is a step in the right direction, when used it is important to recycle the shredded paper in order to reduce waste. For guests, choosing to unplug a fully charged device helps conserve energy.
Do you really need all that paper? Why is that laptop charger still plugged in even as you have no use for it? Making a change takes some effort from everyone, what measures are you taking to reduce your ecological footprint?