Hotel Grand Pacific -- News -- Currents Newsletter

Your index finger hovers over your mouse, which has just parked your cursor somewhere between two clickable buttons on an airline-reservation web page. Click the green “yes” button, and you’ll cough up an extra $40 or so for a carbon offset. Click the red “no” button and hey, someone else probably will, too, so that’s okay.

“Damn, that flight already feels overpriced and we’ll barely get a few crackers,” you think to yourself. “Why should I have to cover the atmospheric invoice? And even if I do, isn’t my money going to vanish into some dubious tree-planting scheme?"

For the greens among us, we’ve all been there: stuck somewhere on the scale between defiance and righteousness, with no perfect option other than not travelling at all. Indeed, market research confirms that while most of us are happier to make a greener choice when planning a trip, we quickly lose enthusiasm when we have to put extra cash behind it.

A recent national survey reported that a scant 13% of US travellers would be willing to pay higher rates or fares to use suppliers who demonstrate environmental responsibility. On the plus side, the same study — conducted jointly by the Travel Industry Association and public relations firm Ypartnership — found 56% said they “might” do so.

That’d be me in the latter group, on the fence, wanting to do the right thing, but not always following through. And out of this eco-angst a bigger question emerges: does a “greener” trip have to cost more? Like that $5 head of local, organic lettuce at the supermarket, does sustainable travel have to carry a price premium? How does a regular family guy reconcile his good intentions with reality on the road?

First, for the same reasons I try to avoid shopping in big-box stores, I choose not to support mass-market, all-inclusive-style package vacations, opting instead for more self-directed journeys that pump money directly into local economies. I try to fly less often. And when I visit a new city, I choose greener options wherever I can find them.

Take accommodation. Thanks to a rating and certification program launched by the Hotel Association of Canada more than a decade ago (but only recently brought into the web era), I can now choose a property based on its efforts to reduce waste and conserve resources across its operations.

The program’s not perfect: it’s self-regulating with minimal oversight; though so far only a handful of Canadian hotels have claimed the top “Green Key” rating, says Tony Pollard, the association’s president. (Namely, Hotel Grand Pacific in Victoria, BC; Saskatoon Inn in Saskatoon, SK; Hotel Delta Sherbrooke in Sherbrooke, QC; Citadel Halifax Hotel in Halifax, NS; and Days Inn locations across Canada.) Pollard notes that certified hotels are very competitive with non-listed properties, because energy and waste savings — and not guests — generally finance the green upgrades.

Then there's the question of a rental car. When I need one, I request a hybrid. Although there are a few out there, they’re still rare birds and aren’t yet typically reserveable. Enterprise, National and Alamo all have a large fleet of flex-fuel vehicles, where available, that burn gas high in ethanol. But the three companies only stock around 5,000 hybrids on the whole continent.

Ditto Avis and Budget: out of a North American fleet of 360,000 vehicles, the companies only rent about 5,000 hybrids between them, which parent company spokesman John Barrows attributes both to limited manufacturer supply and consumer demand. “We are not yet experiencing hordes of frustrated customers hoping to rent one,” he says.

Not many of those 5,000 hybrids are yet available in Canada. Even so, Avis at the Vancouver, BC, airport has some (Toyota Prius). A few can be had from Budget licensees that independently buy and manage their own fleets. A friend recently renting in Nanaimo, BC, found he had a choice of several hybrids, at no additional charge over a similar conventional vehicle.

Barrows calls that an anomaly. In most cases, he says, hybrids cost more at the rental desk, simply because they cost more from the dealer. “We are still paying a premium,” he says, “and that is reflected in a higher daily rate.”

I’d still pay it. Especially if I know I’ll be doing a lot of urban stop-and-start driving, because I’ll spend less at the pump. But it’s mostly because — call me a statistical glitch — price isn’t everything to me. I’ll also seek out, and yes, pay more if I need to, local and organic food and drink, and make every effort to spend my vacation dollars on locally owned companies.

It’s too easy to shrug and say that green automatically means extra green. Much of the time, I suspect, sustainable travel simply means making more thoughtful choices.

Sure, I still sometimes waver over that mouse button. But I’ll probably go for the green. Not because I’ve been conditioned to find the lowest price, but because doing the right thing — or at least doing a slightly better thing — just feels good. Isn’t that what we want out of a vacation, anyway?