Most people still consider a guidebook an essential addition to their global wandering. Packed with sights, restaurants and bar listings, these weighty tomes generally require a wheelbarrow to cart them around. Geared more to the lifelong backpacker, rather than weekend breakers, a lot of unnecessary paper used to go into these guides, which in turn would add a lot of extra weight to luggage.
Now, however, Lonely Planet is offering readers the chance to download and print any chapters from over 100 of their books, including the Americas and Africa, meaning no extra paper wastage. This is also a great deal for your wallet, guidebooks aren't cheap, but these individual chapters cost as little as £2-£4. Pick them up at the Lonely Planet Shop. [Via Lost Weekend]
The recent "Tourism - Responding to Climate and Poverty Imperatives" conference focused on tourism's role in the global climate change, and the tourism community has agreed to come together and "act effectively on the common cause of climate change response". Linking climate change with the fight against poverty, the UN agency in charge of tourism, UNWTO, is the taking charge and leading the efforts to help address climate change.
This year's World Tourism Day (WTD) will take place in Peru on September 27th and will focus on the increasing awareness of the Davos Declaration Process. Aside from simply helping to advance the awareness of climate change and promote the Davos Declaration Process, they're also going to encourage tourism stakeholders to adapt and to use new technology and "secure financing for the poorest countries".
If you're looking to avoid the carbon cost of flying this year, there are more 'green' holiday destinations than ever, right here in the UK. Conscious of the limitations placed on UK holidaymakers by the weather, many of these are laying on lots of activities to take care of rainy days, and one exciting development is the opening of Bluestone; an eco friendly holiday village set in the ancient woodland of Pembrokeshire Coast.
Due to open in July, Bluestone bills itself as a 'luxurious retreat away from it all' and will comprise of 355 sustainably-built lodges, cottages and studios for self-catering guests. The park is run according to ecologically sound principles, with energy for its attractions coming from an on-site Biomass plant.
Enjoy camping but prefer to hang on to a few home comforts on your travels? Here's some good news: caravanning is green! Or at least it can be, if you take care to keep your emissions as low as possible. I found a great site called Green Caravanning, which helps you plan your trip for maximum energy-efficiency.
The site lets you enter your size of car and caravan and journey details to calculate an approximation of your C02 emissions, then offers advice on how to make the trip greener. There's also a handy comparison tool, which you can use to work out if going by plane or train would be a greener option for the trip you're planning, and a quick play with the tool shows that touring caravan journeys appear to be relatively green in many instances. Let's hear it for the caravan!
No, that's not an unusually high-tech coffee machine you're looking at: it could in fact be your own personal biofuel maker!
If you're willing to shell out £1,750 ($3,607), that is. But think of the savings on petrol? The FuelPod2 is based on technology from a long tradition of engineering and agricultural types who've been making their own fuel for years, and turns used chip fat and other edible cooking oils into clean, green energy you can run you car on. Since you'll presumably be sourcing these oils from your own kitchen, there's no immediate worry about starvation in other parts of the world, and the C02 saving is incredible.
The FuelPod2 makes up to 50 litres of fuel a day and according to the makers, uses "external, thermostatically-controlled band heaters to pre-heat the oil, which ensures that the warming takes places prior to the addition of chemicals". I'm guess that anything else would cause a nasty accident, but the makers assure us it is "safe".
A couple of days ago I was lucky enough to be one of several hundred green activists, academics and hangers on (that’ll be me then) who caught the first Eurostar train out of the new gleaming and incredibly beautiful St Pancras station.
Not only was it the first train to depart from north London as opposed to Waterloo, it also marks a new era for Eurostar in that the company claims the train was the first ever to be carbon neutral. So what does this mean in practice?
When most companies claims to be carbon-neutral there isn't really a huge amount the likes of you and I can do to check up on them. It is slightly different for Eurostar in that while much of their claim has to be taken on trust, there are a few things passengers can do to check the green creds for themselves.
Firstly the trip was really little more than a PR stunt. Eurostar has been trying to green its service for many months now. What happened on Wednesday was that it used the high profile launch of its new service to underline its current green credentials and suggest where it is going in the future.
Bikes are faster than cars if you commute in cities -- it's official, and proven to us by none other than Mr. Gas-Guzzler himself, Jeremy Clarkson. But we didn't need him to tell us that.
So what could be faster (and greener) than a bike that does half the work for you? The new Powabyke commuter bike with lithium batter is the first in a series of electric bikes we put to the test.
Most people still consider a guidebook an essential addition to their global wandering. Packed with sights, restaurants and bar listings, these weighty tomes generally require a wheelbarrow to cart them around. Geared more to the lifelong backpacker, rather than weekend breakers, a lot of unnecessary paper used to go into these guides, which in turn would add a lot of extra weight to luggage.
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If you're looking to avoid the carbon cost of flying this year, there are more 'green' holiday destinations than ever, right here in the UK. Conscious of the limitations placed on UK holidaymakers by the weather, many of these are laying on lots of activities to take care of rainy days, and one exciting development is the opening of 
No, that's not an unusually high-tech coffee machine you're looking at: it could in fact be your own personal biofuel maker! 
A couple of days ago I was lucky enough to be one of several hundred green activists, academics and hangers on (that’ll be me then) who caught the first Eurostar train out of the new gleaming and incredibly beautiful St Pancras station.
