By Marta Lopez
We all love going abroad and discovering new places…But what is behind our travel experiences? Are we hurting those communities with our visit? If you wish more than anything in the world to avoid all those practices and you want to minimise your impact on your new destination, you might be interested in this selection of apps for eco-minded travellers.
1. Pack for a Purpose: Give something back
This is one of the best ways to contribute to responsible tourism and to show the entire community you are visiting that you care about them. Pack for a Purpose lets travellers give locals something in return. Browse through the app and find participating lodges. You will be able to find out what local projects are being developed by the community and what they need at the moment. The last step is to pack the item in your suitcase and drop it off there.
2. Good Guide: Shopping Sustainably
Because Mother Earth deserves a bit more love, anytime we go abroad we need to minimalise our impact on the destination we are visiting. Along with the food we eat, whenever we are abroad we want the services and items we buy to be ethical. Good guide is an app that helps you to find a wide range of companies and products that don’t make a negative impact on the environment, no matter where you’re shopping. The app lets you scan the barcode of products to get the health, environmental and business ratings on a large database of over 90,000 businesses worldwide.
3. Uber & Cabmix: Share your Taxi with Others
This is one of the easiest ways to contribute to responsible tourism. The Barcelona based company Micotuco delivers a global app called Cabmix that helps people to find travellers also looking for cabs to get from the airport to the centre of the city. These are good news for the sustainable tourism and also for travellers’ pockets, as you will be saving an important amount of money on your journey. If Cabmix isn’t available where you are, Uber just launched an Uber Share element to their app, which allows travellers in a city to car pool. Great for airport trips for travellers, but also for getting to work in a greener way for those in cities.
4. Expedia App: Find a Green hotel
Accommodation is also another important key to take into account when we travel. Today finding a green hotel is very easy. The Expedia app lets you find eco-friendly hotels around the world in real time. A good example of how the information is displayed on the screen is the A&O Berlin Mitte. Once you’ve selected the hotel, you will be able to see its affiliation as a sustainable and green property at the bottom. This type of certification measures the impact ´s property on the environment, community, cultural-heritage and the local economy. If you’re one of those travellers that needs to make reservations on the go, this is your app!
5. Eat With: Have (Locally Sourced) Dinner with the Locals!
“Eat, stay and buy locally” says travel writer and journalist, Ondine Cohane. It’s good advice, but finding local and sustainable restaurants is one of the bigger challenges when we go abroad. EatWith provides a global community that invites you to have dinner in the homes of local food lovers. You can choose to dine with people who share your tastes and ethics: vegan, vegetarian and locavore dinners are just some of the options to choose from. This app is currently available for over 20 countries in North America, South America, Australia, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Main image: visitlondon.com
Marta Lopez is a travel writer based in London. She loves travelling and meeting new cultures. When she isn’t writing on her laptop, she can be found around the city looking for the best street food markets and downloading the latest app for iPad.
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Check out the Quadruple Travel App Full – it provides worldwide sustainable restaurants, hotels, activities, etc.
On behalf of Pack for a Purpose i would like to thank you for this wonderful shout out. Spreading the word about how easy it is to make all your travel impactful helps travelers make the trips they take go much farther than the miles they travel!
With gratitude,
Rebecca Rothney
Founder and Chairperson
Pack for a Purpose