Sustainability
Travel Guide

1. Choose accommodation options that use renewable energy to power their facilities.

2. Choose electric vehicles when hiring a car or booking a taxi. In New Zealand, for example, Green Cabs is an environmentally-friendly taxi company.

1. Support cities and communities that are helping transform their environment into a more sustainable living space.

2. Visit cities and communities making the effort to protect and safeguard their cultural and natural heritage.

3. Choose short-term cycling or scooter hire. For example, some cities have introduced Lime as easy access to electric scooters. Other cities also have local bicycle hires. For example, Brisbane City Council has its local CityCycle with stations across Brisbane for you to explore the city.

4. Visit cities that adopt and put in place integrated policies and plans towards inclusion, resource efficiency, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, and resilience to disasters.

1. Minimise your resource use while traveling. This includes everything from shopping, single-use plastic, energy and water use, food, toiletries, etc. 


2. Support destinations and businesses that are integrating sustainability into their COVID-19 recovery plans.

3. Visit countries committed to taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.

4. Educate yourself on sustainable behaviours, initiatives or businesses you can support while in-country. 


5. Visit countries that incorporate sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources.

6. Prevent food waste while traveling. Buy only what you need.

7. Make sure you recycle! Although some countries haven’t developed a city-wide recycling program, you might find there are collection points serviced by private recycling businesses. 


8. Support businesses that have sustainable procurement policies.

9. Consider writing a review or sending a quick ‘thank you’ email to sustainable businesses you engaged with while traveling.

✦ Promotes interaction with local people. One of the main ways of contributing to sustainability is to support local businesses. By doing so, you are helping the ‘people’ aspect of sustainable development, while also preventing economic leakage; an issue that in tourism, happens more often than you might think. 


✦ Fosters an opportunity to discover a destination’s unique features while acquiring new knowledge. In your search for more sustainable alternative businesses, cities or destinations to support, you might find information about places you had never considered in the first place. By broadening your horizons, you tap into undiscovered treasures that the typical ‘must-see’ travel guides don’t cover.

✦ Fosters sustainability in the travel and tourism industry. More and more, the tourism industry is realising the importance of incorporating sustainability. In fact, a study by booking.com showed that travellers of all ages are embracing green travel. Gen Z (those aged 16-24) are no different. It looks like the future of travel is green!

✦ Leads to lower consumption and resource use. By being more mindful of bringing in sustainability principles into your travels, you will help lower consumption and resource use across the destinations you visit. This is particularly important when visiting destinations already struggling with a certain issue. For example, by being mindful of your water use when visiting Australia, you can help contribute to water savings, helping drought alleviation.

✦ Helps reduce the impact on our environment and natural world. Finally, traveling with a sustainability mindset will help reduce our overall impact on the environment. Think about it: if each traveller chooses to be more mindful of their own travels, we can transform our collective impact in the destinations we visit and right across the world.

✦ Be cautious of greenwashing. Some companies will provide misleading information about their sustainability credentials. They do this to create a false impression and ‘tap into’ the eco-conscious market. How can you make sure you don’t fall victim to greenwashing?

✦ Do some research. Even before booking your travel plans, we suggest you check out some destinations that are doing sustainability well. They might inspire you to visit them as a show of support! Once you’ve set your heart on a destination, have a look at businesses you can support while visiting. Is there an eco-friendly café near where you’re staying? Are there any green accommodation options that may be a better alternative than traditional accommodations? Asking these questions will help you plan for your trip more sustainably. 

✦ Vote with your money. Every time you buy something you are inherently saying that you support that product. Be mindful of where your money is going to. 

✦ Be flexible and kind to yourself and others. And finally, in the words of Kermit The Frog, “it’s not easy being green”. Every person’s sustainability journey is unique. Some may be ahead, others behind. Some people might not even have considered sustainability in the first place. That’s ok. We all start somewhere and the important thing is for many of us to do sustainability imperfectly. We are all slowly changing ourselves and with that, the world. We’ll get there!

When looking at Oslo’s effort to conserve its natural areas, it is easy to see why the city won the European Green Capital Award for 2019. Not only does Oslo conserve its natural areas, but it is also restoring its waterways network, making them more available for people, facilitating restoration of habitat and efficiently managing storm water. Oslo also plans to become carbon neutral by 2050.

By visiting Oslo you are helping support the economy of Europe’s Green Capital. You can read more about Oslo’s commitment to sustainability in the Visit Oslo website.

Copenhagen is one of the most sustainable cities in the world! With an ambitious target of becoming carbon neutral by 2025, the city incorporates a range of eco-friendly initiatives. This includes, for example, green transport initiatives, sustainable urban development, organic food gardens, and over two-thirds of eco-friendly hotels.

To read more about Copenhagen’s sustainability initiatives, visit the Visit Copenhagen website.

With its Greenest City initiative, Vancouver aims to address its own environmental challenges. The initiative includes a climate emergency plan, developing no Greenhouse Gas Emissions buildings by 2030, a long-term zero waste vision, greening City operations and promoting ways its citizens can reduce their own carbon footprint at home.

You can visit the City of Vancouver’s website to learn more about these awesome initiatives.

Iceland has experienced a surge in tourism in a short amount of time. With its fragile ecosystems, it is becoming a big challenge. However, Icelanders are addressing this issue head on. They have started to disperse visitors away from hot spots and have introduced management strategies to help protect their natural areas.

Before visiting Iceland, make sure you sign up to The Icelandic Pledge, where you show your commitment to be a responsible traveller while visiting. 

Curitiba is known as Brazil’s ‘green capital’. The city represents the gold standard in sustainable urban planning in South America. Its beginnings were rooted in radical ideas coming from urban planners that had the courage to act. They replaced one of the city’s main streets into a pedestrian mall, built express lanes for buses (which later became the Bus Rapid Transit system), introduced trash-for-tokens to encourage recycling and allocated over 50 square metres of green space per person.

Known as Asia’s greenest city, Singapore is on a mission to become the world’s greenest city. Although Singapore has seen huge economic growth, urban planners continue to weave nature throughout the city’s towering architecture. In fact, green buildings have been mandatory since 2008! And this trend will continue to rise, with Singapore aiming to have 80% of its buildings achieving Green Mark rating by 2030.

To learn more about Singapore’s sustainability initiative, head on to the Visit Singapore website.

Stockholm is considered one of Europe’s most environmentally-friendly cities. In fact, the EU Commission awarded Stockholm with the European Green Capital award in 2010.

The city is on a mission to be climate positive by 2040. Currently, Stockholm has a strategic Environment Programme that sets goals within the most challenging environmental areas of the city.

Smart City Sweden has also identified 5 focus areas to work on to ensure Stockholm is a city developed smartly and sustainably. To read more about these focus areas, head on over to the Smart City Sweden website.