Full time travel whilst being eco-friendly
This blog post is about full-time travel and being more eco-friendly whilst doing it. Two concepts that you may think don’t go together, but with a little forethought and effort they can be a match made in heaven. There are a few chapters in my book all about this subject.
We’ve been travelling full time for a lot of our adult life; spending two years backpacking around the world when we were younger, and now living a fully nomadic life doing housesitting full time. This allows us to travel but in a more grown up way – no more hostel dorm rooms for months on end, or communal bathroom facilities! It also means that we can keep working whilst we travel as we are both digital nomads and all we need is Wi-Fi to get to work. This gives us more of a sense of purpose than when we were simply waifing and straying our way around the world on a budget, and we have more stability from the income earned.
I’ve always been a bit of an eco-warrior, so I used to feel a bit torn when I considered that travel was my main passion in life. An eco warrior who advocates full time travel? Surely not. Yes, that’s right. In the huge change of lifestyle we made in 2022 to rent our house out and housesit full time, I realised I needed to act in line with my green thoughts and become a greener traveller.
When it comes to housesitting and travel, the main things I need to think about to keep my carbon emissions low and my eco-status high are..
1) How we get from A to B
2) How to travel lightly
3) Which locations I choose to housesit in
Number 1 seems obvious – to reduce your carbon footprint you should attempt to cease flying and travel over land. This has been my goal for the last 2 years, and in that time I’ve only taken 3 return flights to countries that couldn’t be reached via land in the time constraints we had (Central Asia, the USA and Albania). We tend to travel to any housesit in Europe by bus or train, as they are so well run overseas. In the UK we have our own vehicle which we use to drive between housesits. If you do travel by public transport such as bus or train, check out whether there is an option to go on a service that is electric or run by renewable energy; Europe is a forerunner in these things so they are becoming more and more available.
Number 2 is something that a lot of people don’t connect to an increase in carbon emissions. Travelling with lots of luggage increases the weight that is in that plane, car, bus, and so on. The increase in weight requires more effort and therefore more energy to physically move along, which then increases the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere. It’s a simple fact that travelling lighter is travelling greener. When we travel to housesits in Europe I have a backpack for my clothes and toiletries and a smaller rucksack which has my work things in – laptop, books and notepads. This is as light as I can travel.
I much prefer travelling this way in the summer months as the outfits are smaller so I can take more of them with me, and I also cut down on the weight from my shoes – no bulky boots in the summer, only my hiking boots, flipflops and trainers. I go over my eco packing hacks in my book but I’ll briefly mention some here – use compression sacks, they work wonders on reducing the size of your luggage. Upgrade your toiletries to reusable instead of throwaway (think flannel instead of face wipes), and buy from eco-friendly brands such as Tropic skincare. Get rid of big bulky layers and invest in warm but thin layers made of materials like merino wool.
Number 3 is something I spend a lot of time considering when applying for housesits. It’s something else that people don’t often think about when travelling between housesits. The closer together they are geographically, the less travel is required and therefore the smaller your carbon footprint. We tend to group sits together – committing to travelling to one area or country and then looking for 6 months’ worth of sits in that area or region. This means we are travelling less in general and get to see more of the country we are in. It also gives us a big eco boost.
I want to talk a little bit now about travelling with a conscience. It can be hard to combat your worries about the impact you are having on the environment, especially if you are an eco-warrior like me. However, after a lot of research and reading, and a lot of late-night anxious thoughts on the subject, I’ve come to realise that no matter what I do I am releasing carbon – just by breathing. I know that I am doing my best to be more green when I travel, and that is as much as I can do. I truly believe that if you are making travel plans that are more eco-friendly, without compromising your comfort, work or health too much, then you are doing some good in the world.
As I say in my book, “We will never stop travelling completely. So, we need to make conscious decisions about how and when we travel to reduce pollution and our individual carbon footprints. Through our actions and decisions, we can influence policy makers in governments, the travel industry itself and our own friends, families and communities to make positive steps towards a greener future.”