Sustainable Travel

Personal coaches and employment counselors encourage their clients to write personal mission statements. They claim that this helps clarify values and develop personal goals. But have you ever had anyone encourage you to develop a personal energy policy?

The price of gasoline may be the catalyst that will push many Americans to do so. I expect not many of us have one. Or do we? Here's how Paola and I developed ours...

Tim Wirth, the Toyota Prius, and Ethanol

I started thinking about our energy policy last April after hearing former Colorado Senator Tim Wirth present the distinguished Leadership Lecture in Natural Resources and the Environment at Colorado State University. Wirth is President of the United Nations Foundation, created in 1998 after Ted Turner's billion dollar donation to the UN.
Wirth spoke about the failure of politics in general to bring energy issues to the fore, noting the almost complete lack of debate about energy during the 2004 election. He spoke of the increasing cost of fuel, our continued dependence on foreign oil, and the current increase in the price of fuel. He claims that we are headed toward $100 a barrel for crude oil.

His solution? "I own a Toyota Prius," he said. "If we simply combined existing technology for hybrid electric vehicles with our ability to produce ethanol from agricultural waste," he claimed, "we could cut our dependency on foreign oil very quickly."

After hearing Wirth, I began writing this essay on my personal energy policy. I was going to endorse Wirth's proposal and encourage the use of fuel efficient vehicles combined with ethanol mixes. But I got bogged down in the controversy over the use of corn for ethanol production. It didn't make sense, I felt, to encourage a huge monoculture of corn, which requires heavy fertilizing, hence, a large energy expenditure, to produce fuel.

As I began finalizing this essay our editor, friend, and English professor, Ellen Brinks, penciled in the margin: "what about biodiesel? A much better alternative than hybrid vehicles..." So I called Jeff Probst, CEO of Blue Sun Biodiesel. I put the same question to Jeff as I had about the long-term sustainability of agricultural based ethanol - "where are you going to get it and how does the energy balance work out if you have to grow a monoculture of canola oil that requires fertilizing and spraying for pests?" Jeff's answer was that while more studies are needed, certainly we can achieve the 20% mix using biodiesel fuel and that this will be a lot better than using 100% petroleum based products.

Rocky Mountain Sustainable Living Fair and Yvon Chouinard, President of Patagonia

Last fall, Fort Collins hosted the 6th annual Rocky Mountain Sustainable Living Fair. Yvon Chouinard, the founder and president of Patagonia outdoor wear, was a keynote speaker. Paola and I went to hear him speak, and we were quite impressed. He lamented our lack of sustainability in business and in personal behavior. "You can own a Prius," he said (and he does), "and you can ride a bicycle," he suggested (he does that too), but in the end we've got to make broader, more all encompassing choices about lifestyle.

Americans Made 496 Car Shopping Trips per Household in 2001

My desire to write up a personal energy policy was further encouraged by a recent article by Danny Hakim and Jeremy W. Peters entitled "Go Ahead and Drive Less, if You Can" (New York Times, September 25, 2005). The article sheds interesting light on personal energy policies and finally prompted me to finish ours.

Most interesting are the statistics cited by Hakim and Peters from a Department of Transportation study. In 1990, every household averaged 341 shopping trips using a car. Those trips averaged 5.1 miles in length. In 2001, we averaged 496 shopping trips, averaging 7.01 miles. No doubt the 2001 figure represents the fully fledged baby boomer household with both "echo boomers" (the children of baby boomers) and baby boomer parents driving.

I'm astounded by the 496 trips per year, though. That's 1.36 trips per day. Even more interesting to me, though, was a quote from Emeritus Professor Richard Porter, an economist at the University of Michigan: "People can't change where they live," Porter said. "They can't change where they work, and there aren't any clear substitutes to gas." Therefore, he argued, we're all pretty limited about how we can change our personal energy policy.

With Wirth, Chouinard, and Professor Porter in mind, I began to review our own personal energy policies. And it occurred to me that, as a society or, better yet, as the "baby boom generation" and as individuals, we may be on the verge of a need to make major changes in our personal energy policies.

Evolution of a Personal Energy Policy

Paola and I got rid of our two gas guzzling vehicles in late 2002 when we found that our nest was empty and that we needed only one car. We bought a 2003 Prius. It wasn't a perfect car for us as there was no room inside for a bicycle, but the fuel efficiency of 50 miles plus per gallon attracted us. A year later Toyota made a huge improvement in design and efficiency with the 2004 Prius. They also made it slightly bigger and included rear seats that folded down so you can put a bicycle in the back. We upgraded to the 2004 model immediately and have been very pleased with the result. Our other transport comes in the form of two bicycles which we use to get back and forth to work and to the University 90% of the time.

As I thought about Professor Porter's assertion that "people can't change where they live," I began to wonder. First of all, I remember the process we went through when we built our house in 1991. We had begun looking for either a house or a lot in 1987, and I had put a map of Fort Collins on the wall with a circle centered on Paola's university office. The radius of the circle was one mile, the distance Paola said she would walk or pedal to work (she had already made it clear she wouldn't drive). One other constraint we put on our house search was that the house had to face north so the backyard faced south, allowing for warm winter picnics on the deck, passive solar heating, and protection from the northwest wind. We found just such a building lot about three quarters of a mile from campus. Even better, the lot was within 300 yards of one of the primary bike paths in Fort Collins, the Spring Creek Trail, giving us access to a vast network of trails.

When it came time for us to move ExperiencePlus! out of the house, we were lucky to find a building site near "old town" Fort Collins, not more than 2.5 miles from the house. It also happened to be right off the other major bike trail in town, the Poudre River Trail. The location of both house and office eventually allowed me the opportunity to pedal 10 miles one way to work along bike trails with very little traffic, or 2.5 miles across town on bikeways, also with very little traffic. Better yet, the short route to work allows me to walk back and forth in about forty-five minutes.

Professor Porter's assertion that people can't change where they live or where they work proved untrue in our case. Certainly the change isn't easy, and both took time, but given the life style changes faced by many baby boomers today, such choices may not be all that difficult. I wonder, in fact, if we are seeing the tip of a small iceberg in Fort Collins as loft apartments and similar small apartments are beginning to pop up in our city center. As far as I can tell, these are the avant-garde of a new migration that fits the boomer demographic: empty nesters on the leading edge or just slightly older folks from the pre-World War II generation.

American Demographics (December 1, 2003) has reported on this trend. "Many of the newer town centers hark back to the great downtowns of the 1920s. These now offer a mix of great restaurants and entertainment options. More mixed-use zoning means you'll find condos or apartments on the second floor of buildings above ground-floor retail spaces. More densely settled communities that recreate main streets and central meeting places in areas like City Place, FL and Santana Row, CA, appeal to young singles and empty-nesters. These are places where one could shop on foot. Town centers like Bethesda Row, in Bethesda, MD seamlessly blend existing, renovated structures with new development, producing a destination that rivals downtown DC as a dining and gathering place." Fort Collins and Boulder, Colorado could certainly be added to this list as could many other college towns throughout America.

Our home is not in downtown Fort Collins and we can't easily walk to our city center restaurants. But both Paola and I can walk to work. Furthermore, we can pedal to almost any shopping venue in town and often do. In short, our own personal energy policy has taken shape over the past ten years without us ever really focusing on developing it.

We're not alone. In our energy decisions, we're part of a local and regional dynamic. Robert Grow, a Utah lawyer and founder of Envision Utah, a unique approach to regional planning and "visioning" recently spoke about the process of planning for growth and transportation on the Wasatch Front north and south of Salt Lake City. Through a complex series of town meetings involving thousands of community members, Envision Utah resulted in revolutionary regional land use plans that included the purchase of 175 miles of unused or little used Union Pacific railroad lines for commuter rail lines. Add to this bus lines, and you have a system which encourages public transportation and the redesign of cities and neighborhoods to maximize livability, walking, and mixed use commercial and residential areas (by Grows own admission, bicycling lagged behind in this process).

Call it new urbanism, call it the Europeanization of America, or blame it on higher gas prices, but the result is that we are entering a new period of personal choices in this country that have to do with personal, local, and regional energy policies. So get in shape, start walking and start pedaling!

Postscript

To paraphrase the Union of Concerned Scientists, "Paper or plastic? It doesn't really matter. What matters is how you got to the grocery store."

Have you got a personal energy policy? We'd like to hear about it. Just write it up and email it to us. We're especially interested in those of you using biodiesel, ethanol, hybrid vehicles, public transit, or combinations of these.

About the Author

Rick Price, Ph.D in Cultural Geography, and his wife, Paola Malpezzi-Price, Ph.D in Romance Languages, are the owners and founders of ExperiencePlus! Specialty Tours, Inc. Since 1969 they have walked and bicycled throughout Europe, exploring local cultures and collecting stories. If you would like to contact Rick or Paola, please email them or visit the ExperiencePlus! website.

This article was reprinted with permission from ExperiencePlus!

Posted by BrianM at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Unlike the world of 50 years ago, today everyone travels. And for travel professionals, that’s a positive thing. However, travel by its very nature has an impact - often negative - on the environment, on culture and on the economies of local people who play host to tourism throughout the world. This is why sustainable travel - travel that leaves the world a better place for us having been there - is essential if we want tourism to continue to be the profitable economic resource that it is today.

The impacts of travel and tourism
Whether or not we like to think about it, the sheer process of travel depletes natural resources and causes pollution. Creating and maintaining the infrastructure for tourism often brings negative physical impacts on the environment such as deforestation, alteration of ecosystems and intensified or unsustainable use of land. Travel is also a major culprit of climate change, accounting for one-third of the world’s climate damaging greenhouse gas emissions. These effects, in turn, are beginning to have a profound impact on the travel and tourism industry.

Tourism also alters the face of culture and society, not only for people in far away places such as tribal communities in the Amazon rain forest, but also in local communities throughout our more familiar North America. Host communities find themselves adapting their original culture and their societal structure in ways that will facilitate tourism, sometimes resulting in cultural deterioration and change or loss of indigenous identity and values. The basic physical influences of tourism can also cause social stress, such as resource use conflicts and traditional land-use conflicts. Cultural clashes can result.

Perhaps cultural and social changes are justified by economic benefits, we rationalize. But while we like to think of tourism as having a positive economic effect on the communities we visit, sometimes the opposite is true. Often little of the total tourism expenditures actually remain in the local communities after taxes. There is also the issue of enclave tourism, in which travelers spend all of their time and money in all-inclusive cruise ships or resorts rather than with merchants in the areas they visit. As a result, price inflation often occurs, contributing to less spending. Some communities also develop an economic dependence on tourism, which is completely unhealthy to their long-term well-being.

The benefits of sustainable travel
Wherever there are negative impacts, there is an opportunity for positive change. As travel professionals living in a world where the environment, the culture and the economy are threatened, we have an opportunity to protect our natural and cultural heritage so that everyone can benefit. We can do this by encouraging and supporting sustainable travel and tourism. We can build consumer awareness and increase demand for sustainable tourism by raising industry standards. What many refer to as a win-win situation, we call the Triple Bottom Line - economic profitability, respect for the environment and social responsibility. The Triple Bottom Line means improvement in conservation of the natural environment, social benefit for local communities and profit for business owners and shareholders, which leads ultimately to gain for national or regional economies.

But, you ask, what are the bottom-line benefits for my company? There is ample evidence and research available to support the case that the bottom-line to green is back. By pursuing sustainability within your operations, you can improve profitability and lower costs through resource productivity and waste reduction, while positively contributing to environmental conservation and the well being of local people. Focusing on impact management helps to minimize the negative impacts of tourism and enhance its quality, ensuring the preservation of destinations and cultures for future generations and creating more attractive environments and better products.

Sustainable tour operations can also broaden your market appeal. Travel companies that demonstrate their commitment to sustainability make themselves more attractive to responsible travelers, one of the fastest growing segments in the travel industry. When you promote and practice sustainable travel, you appear on the radar screen of the 58.5 million Americans who say they would pay more to use a travel company that strives to protect and preserve the environment. When you demonstrate your dedication to corporate social and environmental responsibility, you address consumers’ growing concerns about environmental issues and their demand for greater transparency in the market. You also gain market share and improve brand awareness in a highly competitive global market, distinguishing your business from others and enhancing its reputation in a time of fading customer loyalty.

Consumers also benefit from choosing sustainable travel. They gain a true appreciation for and understanding of other cultures. Supporting local communities and environmental conservation makes them feel better about themselves. They are finally able to align their purchasing decisions - which are typically based on pricing, quality and convenience - with their values. And they expand their global perspective.

Local communities benefit as well. Sustainable travel and tourism improve local employment opportunities and wages; enhance opportunities for local enterprise; create collective income sources through fees and revenue share; mitigate negative socio-cultural and environmental impacts; allow for capacity building, education and training; increase local stakeholder participation in decision making; build partnerships between local communities, non-governmental organizations and the private sector; lay the groundwork for more supportive policy and planning frameworks; and improve local infrastructure and services.

The sustainable future and you
For the sustainable tourism movement to grow and support community development, biodiversity conservation and other environmental, socio-cultural and economic improvements, it will have to obtain buy-in from leaders in all segments of the travel and tourism industry. As more and more travel professionals realize the importance of sustainable practices, sustainable travel will begin to appeal to a broader audience whose buying habits have been traditionally based on price, quality and convenience. Tour operators who want to benefit from sustainable tourism need to offer authentic and meaningful experiences that are experiential and educational as well as inspiring and rewarding. We, as travel professionals, have a huge opportunity to promote the inherit values of sustainability as additional benefits for the traveler, preserving and protecting the places we visit and the planet at large.

Posted by BrianM at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There’s no doubt about it – business travel is big business.

According to the 2004 Business and Convention Travelers Report, business travel comprised only 18 percent of total travel volume in 2003, yet 38 million business travelers generated nearly 211 million person-trips, equating to 31 percent, or $153 billion, of all domestic travel spending. In 2004, 50 percent of guest rooms were reserved by business travelers, helping the lodging industry gross $16.7 billion in pretax profits, according to the American Hote and Lodging Association. This is good news for the travel and tourism industry, considered by many to be the largest industry in the world. But it can be bad news from an environmental standpoint.

In fact, travel is a main culprit of climate change, accounting for almost one-third of worldwide climate damaging emissions, reports the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. And the fastest-growing contributor of global climate change is air travel. The average American who takes one or two trips abroad annually emits 19,841 pounds, or almost 10 tons, of carbon dioxide (CO2). If everyone in the world emitted as much CO2, it’s estimated that we’d need two-and-a-half planets to support us.

Also consider the resources used and waste generated by hotels, conferences and business meetings, as well as the CO2 generated by rental cars, shuttle busses, taxis, and other forms of transportation. Add it all up, and it becomes clear that businesses are in a unique position to help increase economic and community well-being without degrading the natural environment.

Progressive companies are starting to demand “greener” business travel in an effort to address their environmental, socio-cultural and economic impacts. A recent Association of Corporate Travel Executives survey asked managers whether their companies were measuring social responsibility in the form of published, quantifiable data. Nearly two-thirds of the respondent said yes, and 48 percent of those who said yes also said this was affecting their relationships with travel-related suppliers. In addition, 29 percent said they had either switched to suppliers who offer green business travel options or anticipated that they would switch.

Travel agencies that offset their clients’ greenhouse gas emissions, rental car agencies that offer hybrid vehicles, conference centers that host green meetings, and hotels that use renewable-sourced energy, reduce waste, and utilize fair employment practices are becoming primary considerations when companies negotiate business travel deals with travel suppliers.

Progressive companies are also offering employees incentives to carpool, bike or use public transportation to get to work. The use of renewable energy as well as environmentally preferred and locally produced products and services is also on the increase. Many companies have learned that when they employ sustainable business practices, the positive public relations, productivity gains and other benefits often outweigh any cost differences. Despite all of the good things happening within the corporate sector, it can still be challenging for business travelers to find the best travel options. We’ve compiled a list of quality resources to help businesses green their travel:

Air and land travel
The MyClimate program allows business travelers to calculate and neutralize the greenhouse gas “costs” associated with their flights (and other company operations) for as little as $15 per flight. The money is invested in climate-friendly renewable energy and energyefficiency projects that meet the Kyoto protocol and reduce an equivalent amount of emissions elsewhere.

Car rentals
Finding car rental companies that offer natural gas, electric and hybrid-electric rentals can be difficult. Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Avis don’t offer them at all in the United States, and Budget and Hertz only offer them at select locations. Currently, the best bets are EV Rental Cars and Bio-Beetle, which offer rentals in Arizona, California and Hawaii. They are the only environmentally focused vehicle rental companies in the United States. For other locations, consider next-best options. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offers a list of such options at www.epa.gov/greenvehicles.

Lodging
From installing energy-efficient lighting and new heating, ventilating and air-conditioning systems to featuring only locally sourced and organic ingredients on restaurant menus, many accommodations are actively pursuing sustainability. Green Seal and the Green Hotels Association encourage, promote and support this innovation in the lodging industry, and their Web sites list green hotels on a state-by-state basis. Can’t find a green hotel? The Green Hotel Initiative Guest Request Card is designed to help business travelers request environmentally responsible services upon checking into a hotel, as well as the opportunity to provide feedback when checking out. The card is available at www.ceres.org/industryprograms/ghi.php.

Meetings and conferences
Green meetings and conferences focus on reducing negative impacts throughout all stages of implementation, including using only paperless technology, avoiding the use of any disposables, serving water in bulk containers or only upon request, and purchasing locally produced products and services, as well as those that have a reduced environmental impact. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offers corporate event planners and suppliers a multitude of resources and information to help organize green meetings, including an easy-to-follow even planning checklist (www.resourcesaver.org/file/toolmanager/O16F2392.pdf). Need help planning a meeting? Contact the Green Meetings Industry Council.

Brian T. Mullis is president of Sustainable Travel International (www.sustainabletravelinternational.org), a nonprofit that provides programs to help travelers and travel-related companies protect the environmental, socio-cultural and economic needs of the places they visit.

http://www.sijournal.com/commentary/2093682.html

Posted by BrianM at 2:17 PM | Permalink