In 2020, EU-wide air traffic fell to almost a quarter of its normal volume, and Germany even managed to meet its climate targets. However, with the lifting of many protective measures and facilitation of entry, the number of holidaymakers has been increasing steadily since 2021.
But how sustainable is our vacation? Is that even possible if you don’t want to do without the plane? And why do we seem to find it so difficult to rethink? Although more than 50 percent of those surveyed sustainability study When it came to holidays, only just under a quarter of respondents said that environmental protection was also important to them when travelling.
In psychology, this difference between attitudes and actual behavior is called the attitude-behaviour gap. But where does she come from? There is a motivation to behave more environmentally consciously, but the rare holiday offers are rarely accepted. The researchers of the study discuss various reasons for this: Those who go on vacation are often in a patronizing mood. In this mood, more people are willing to make compromises in environmental protection and allow themselves the flight to the dream beach. In addition, a photo on the white beach promises more social standing and prestige than a hike through the Black Forest. In times of social media, this is a factor that should not be neglected.
Green travel doesn’t have to be expensive
Many respondents also thought that green travel is always more expensive. But that doesn’t have to be true. Should a CO2 tax be introduced in the near future, it may even be that environmentally conscious travel will be the cheaper option in the long term and across the board.
Recently, it has been shown that people who are very interested in and committed to environmental protection are more willing to book their trips through climate-neutral tour operators. So if you have knowledge about what your own contribution to environmental pollution or protection is concerned, you are often more willing to adapt your own behavior. Education can help close the attitude-behaviour gap.
So how do you make your vacation more climate-neutral?
The bad news first: No bamboo toothbrush or glass straw can offset the carbon emissions of a flight. Aviation contributes significantly to the emission of greenhouse gases. Nevertheless, there are ways and means to consider the environment when booking a trip.
We already have many of the tools we need for sustainable travel – this applies to tour operators as well as consumers. Before booking, environmentally conscious holidaymakers take the time to calculate the ecological footprint of the planned trip and to consider where they can save CO2 and where they can compensate for unavoidable environmental pollution in the right way. Event organizers can help their customers to make better decisions through increased marketing and the expansion of climate-neutral offers. But as always, demand ultimately controls supply.
Gentle tourism: discover more in less
Of course, if the distance allows, you can switch from the plane to public transport such as trains or ferries, but the vacation days are often too short or the desired level of comfort is not achieved. So if you don’t want to or can’t do without the plane, you have the opportunity to look around for more environmentally friendly alternatives to conventional flights. Many large flight providers have their own seals that indicate when booking whether the flight is more climate-neutral. There are now companies like SkyNRG that are producing sustainable jet fuel from renewable biomass so as not to further burden the remaining reserves of fossil fuels.
On site, the motto is then to discover more in less and to travel according to the principles of gentle tourism. These are to damage nature in the holiday destination as little as possible and to adapt as much as possible to the culture of the place you are visiting. After a day at the beach, rubbish and bottles are collected and properly recycled, hotel operators rely on drinking water recycling and regenerative energies.