Top 10 Travel Tips - November 2007
1. Environmental Underground
When you hit London you can either pay more for the environmentally unfriendly option of a paper subway ticket, or you can do as the Londoners do and invest in an Oyster Card. These plastic travel passes cut down on the trees cut down for regular tickets, they get you half price travel on the London Underground, set £0.90 fares for all journeys on London Buses and they never expire - so your credit still works whenever you return to the British capital.
2. Offsetting Your Offsetting
Offset the carbon emissions from your flight by paying a little extra for your plane ticket. This might mean less money in your sightseeing budget but we in turn we will offset that with our monthly top ten, money saving tips in the St Christopher's cities. This popular E-zine feature includes some top contemporaneous tips such as free comedy nights with the BBC! This broadcasting institution is always on the look out for audience members so for your free tickets be sure to investigate the website.
3. Body Matters
Big name supermarkets offer unbeatable prices because they fly and ship products in from sources all over the globe. They're cheap at the source but by the time they arrive, their environmental cost is most certainly quite pricey. Organic food from local farms doesn't involve major transport emissions and the food is produced using chemicals that aren't as damaging. Most supermarkets stock organic food, but for some super tasty examples take a trip to Borough Market near London Bridge or the Wednesday Markets in Hammersmith.
4. Herd Mentality
If everyone in the world switched off a light at the same time for just five minutes, we could do a lot to reverse the recent sleigh ride into global warming and give the earth a much needed chance to catch its breath. That principle is priceless and shows just how valuable communication is. In the Lonely Planet's Annual Travellers' Pulse Survey 84 percent of people said they would try to counteract their emissions in the future. There was also support for boycotting flying for other less damaging modes of transport, airlines reducing the number of flights, an increase in flying costs (such as a carbon tax) and the idea of everyone having an annual carbon allowance into which they must fit their travel.
5. Get The Look
When you buy new clothes check the label to make sure they're not Dry Clean Only. This process leaves chemicals on your clothes which are then exposed to the world around you - when you wear your finely pressed best. The chemicals can also damage the materials, making it necessary to buy new threads - which brings us back to the carbon footprint of global brands.
6. Make Your Mark In The Office
Make your co-workers, fellow students and backpacking buddies drink they daily caffeine fix from a real mug. Plastic and polystyrene cups are among the worst ingredients in the world's ever increasing landfill sites. They take an eternity to break down and they take away that great coffee taste. This is also a great excuse to expense mugs with silly names and pictures on them – for you and your mates.
7. Short Sharp Showers
Take advantage of the timed showers in our hostels. Short, sharp bursts of water reduce the resources needed to refine and pump clean water all over you and they drastically reduce the tone deaf utterings of shower superstars. They wouldn't assault your ears in public so why do they think they can get away with it in the sound amplifying, close quarters of a communal shower cubicle?
8. Bike It In Bruges
Sarah Michelle Gellar is cutting costs and saving the environment by biking around Manhattan so why not do the same in cities like Bruges? As part of our sight seeing, environmentally friendly push we're giving all travellers half a day of free bike rental when they arrive in this beautiful Belgian city. The way in and out of Bruges is also a little more environmentally friendly because there's no airport. Better yet you can get free onward train travel to Bruges - when you arrive in Brussels on the Eurostar. Top notch.
9. Holiday Close To Home
A lot of us forget that the most beautiful sites are the ones on our own doorsteps. International travel is exciting from time to time but you waste money and resources on jetlagged journeys, there's the trauma of seeing the national guard go through your personal possessions, belts come off on the way through the scanners, trousers fall down and cheesy feet are exposed in all their glory when your shoes are checked for plastic explosives. Another benefit of keeping it local is the reassurance that there will be no language barrier at the bar.
10. Tell Your Friends
We're only as good as the people who read this and do something about it so if you've found anything useful in our special edition top ten – then send a link to your mates. We hope that between coffee stops, bike rides, BBC comedies and love on the Northern Line, there's something here that'll help the world in which we live in.
