How can we help make the world a better place, even during our vacations? By becoming an eco-tourist! Let’s try becoming an eco-tourist in San Francisco.

1. Golden Gate Bridge

Visit the majestic Golden Gate Bridge, and walk or bike across its 1.9-km walkway. An average walk may take at least an hour and a half to go to the other side of the bridge. Depending on a person’s resistance to strong winds, it may take him longer. You also can rent a bike to ride from end to end of the bridge. Most bikes are available for rent at $7/hour. To get to the bridge by Muni bus, take bus number 28 from Laguna Street (on Chestnut or Lombard) or along 19th Avenue.

2. Golden Gate Park

Golden Gate Park is the third most visited city park in the United States. Its 1,017 acres of park area houses several sites you can visit. There’s the Kezar Stadium, Conservatory of Flowers, the AIDS Memorial Grove, the San Francisco Botanical Garden, the Stow and Spreckels Lake, the Golden Gate Park Stadium, the Japanese Tea Garden, the de Young Museum and the California Academy of Sciences. There are several ways to get here through Muni transportation. Take the 5 from Market Street through Fulton Avenue. Take the 71 from Market Street through Haight Street. Take the 28 from Golden Gate Park. Or take Muni Metro N and get down at 19th Avenue and either take 28 or walk from there.

3. Farmer’s Markets

Make a difference. Eat local. Shop local. And what better way to do it than to shop at one of the numerous farmers markets all over the city. Be sure to visit year-round market at the Ferry Building, Alemany Market, Divisadero and Noe Valley. Most farmers markets in San Francisco are accessible by Muni. Check out http://www.511.org to find the right bus.

4. Transportation

San Francisco is a small city and using a car to get around the city can be a burden, what with all the one-way streets and hills and lack of parking spaces. Navigate through the city through Muni transportation (which includes the electric bus, commuter trains and cable cars). There’s always a bus going to any of your destinations! Or better yet, be one with the locals and walk the streets of SF.

What else can you contribute as an eco-tourist? Let us know your thoughts through the comments box!

Hoping to live green when you visit Portland, Oregon? Visit these establishments that will aid you in green living.

1. Double Tree Hotel

Double Tree Hotel is Portland’s first sustainable hotel by achieving the Green Seal certification, cementing their green reputation. As a green and sustainable hotel, they have reduced their overall waster disposal, successfully diverted their kitchen water into compost, significantly reduced the use of water and paper, reduced total energy consumption (with the help of the employee mass transit, among others), established a property-wide recycling program, supports local farmers and growers by using their items in the hotel, and is a 100% non-smoking hotel. They currently are adding more programs to their cause by providing hybrid cars for the guests, Biodiesel shuttles and purchasing renewable power.

1000 Ne Multnomah St, Portland, OR; Tel. (503)281-6111

2. Laughing Planet Cafe

The Laughing Planet Cafe has goals: 1) to serve appetizing, healthy and simple food dishes at moderate prices; 2) to use whole, unprocessed, sustainably produced ingredients and packaging whenever possible; 3) to create a significant value for their community and reinvest in the local economy; and 4) to increase the world’s supply of mirth, humor and beans. Using the convenience of the “burrito”, Laughing Planet Cafe used this concept to start the “cult of the burrito”, where they deliver whole foods, complimentary nutrition and global flavor to their customers. In 2008, the Laughing Planet Cafe was awarded by the City of Portland’s Office of Sustainability the BEST award in the “Sustainable Food Systems” category.

Main Office: 916 SE 34th Avenue, Suite 200, Portland, OR 97214; Tel. (503)546-2972

Next stop: Chicago, Illinois

Yes, as the title says, there is a boat made out of plastic water bottles. This boat, called Plastiki, is made completely out of plastic bottles and recycled waste products. They plan to sail this boat starting in August 2009. When it is complete, Plastiki will be comprised of 12,500 2-liter plastic bottles that have been collected by Waste Management. The whole  boat will end up weighing 9 tons and will support a team of 6 crew members.

The boat also has a composting toilet on board, renewable energy, and a garden.

Why was this plastic boat made? Well, David De Rothschild, founder of the company Adventure Ecology, wanted to raise awareness about the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch. He plans on sailing this boat made of only plastic bottles and recycled materials from  San Fransisco to Sydney, Australia. He wants to raise awareness about the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch because it happens to be a floating landfill that is, get this, twice the size of Texas. Ever heard of it? I had not until now, but it apparently is located between California and Hawaii. It is because of this landfill that there are masses of plastic materials floating around in the oceans.

Yes, this boat will help the problem of doing nothing with plastic bottles, but that is not the main goal. The point of building this boat entirely from plastic is to make people more aware of being green and of recycling. He wants to get people talking and involved. For instance, did you know that we consume 200 billion liters of bottled water every year but that about only one in five bottles is actually recycled? I did not know that until I read an article about this new boat.

I think that this boat is a great invention–not only because it will use 12,500 plastic bottles but that it will start conversations and turn some heads. I wish the crew the best of luck as they venture from San Francisco to Sydney, Australia, with Plastiki!

One of the ways that we’re trying to save the world is by trying to create and use cars that run on alternative sources of energy. Whether that energy be derived from electricty, diesel, solar power, or something else, we want to encourage making the world a healthier place. Well, in the Sunshine State of the United States (that is Florida for those of you who did not know that), they are setting up a  solar electric vehicle charging station.

By this summer, RubeLab, a nonprofit corporation that aids inventors in bringing new green technologies to market, may be starting the sun-to-battery movement in the state by installing its first solar electric vehicle charging station in the  group’s Florida home town of Eustis. Also donating to this station is Advanced Solar Photonics–they are donating the photovoltaic panel– and a local metal-works company will contribute toward building the facility which will cost at least $20,000.  The station will be used to charge cars that are in need of a quick charge, but if someone wanted their car to be charged to its maximum amount, then they would have to go out for dinner or go grocery shopping.

Electric cars are more common in places like Florida because of the ever present sunhine and the fact that there are more flat roads than in places like Vermont. Electric cars seem to be the more logical choice when they can travel further distances without having to exert the extra energy climbing hills.  They are more useful in places where speed limits are low or where people have to stop frequently–such as on golf courses.

Now is the time to link charging battery powered cars with solar power. What better place to start than the Sunshine State?

I’m sure you’ve heard it all before: hybrids are energy-efficient, help reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced by cars, and will help you save money on gas. Yet, it seems that some of us don’t buy it, quite literally. Many of us cling to what we’re used to, praying to believe the myths that say things like, “A Hummer is more efficient than a hybrid because of the energy put into making its battery.” False, false, false. This myth actually originated from an article that has since been retracted because it was based off of irrelevant data.

A normal gas-powered car can travel very far and fast without refueling, but it is harmful for the environment and will get relatively poor mileage. A pure electric car, however, can’t travel very fast or can’t go very far, yet it is clean and uses no gasoline. The concept behind the hybrid is that it takes the better aspects of both types to create a useful and efficient car.

A car that normally gets 25-30 mpg could get 40-50 mpg. How does this happen? In a parallel hybrid, the electric motor adds power to the gasoline motor to reduce the amount of gas used. When you “put on the brakes”, the battery for the motor actually can recharge because the motor reverses its system and acts as a generator that pulls energy from the speed of the car. In a series hybrid, the gasoline motor never actually directly powers the wheels and instead only powers the generator that helps the electric motor.

In either case, the engine is much smaller, and this is a key ingredient in the efficiency of hybrids. A smaller engine means less weight (and many hybrids are made of lighter, not to say less sturdy, materials than the average car), which means less energy getting up to speed. Also, a smaller engine is more likely to get to a point where it is being used to its full potential, comparable to how it is better to do full loads of laundry.

For more information on the specific hybrids available, visit our sister site Gas Pedal Addicts. For further reading on hybrids, I would suggest the articles on How Stuff Works.

Try as we might to avoid them, we still turn to cars for much of our business. There are a lot of suggestions for drivers: what to do and what not to do. Often, statements disagree. So, what should you do? What difference will it make?

• Drive the speed limit. – The amount of horsepower it takes to move a car increases exponentially with speed. This means that doubling your speed can quadruple the amount of gas that is used. Also, for the amount of time (or should I say lack there of) you save, going fast isn’t worth it. For a five mile stretch on the highway, going 75 mph will get you there in about 4 minutes while 60 mph gets you there in 5 minutes. There’s just a minute difference, so if you’re already late, the minute won’t make much a difference anyway. Your safest bet is to drive the speed limit, if not below it.
• As far as AC and open windows are concerned…- At highway speeds, the “fuel consumption” difference between the two of them is negligible. Using the AC always will reduce your miles per gallon, so at lower speeds, opt for the windows. If you don’t like the smell/strength of the outside air, you always could bring a portable fan into your car; portable fans won’t affect your fuel consumption.
• Use cruise control – Cruise control has an average savings of 7% because it reduces the surges a normal driver has that wastes gas. You should not use cruise control in mountainous regions.
• Check your tire pressure. -You’ve probably heard this one before. You should keep your tires within the recommended limits, for safety and efficiency. Firmer tires are more efficient on the road than their counterparts
• Avoid idling, it wastes gas. – Do so by… Staying away from driving during rush hour, stopping for fast food rather than using the drive through, turning the car off when waiting for more than a couple minutes (ex. picking up a friend), and waiting to turn on the car until after you’re completely ready to drive (fastening seat belt, adjusting mirrors).

When we talk about “green” transportation, most of us automatically think of hybrid cars. Hybrid cars are, of course, more efficient than regular cars, but there are many other aspects of your transportation that you can make greener. Particularly when talking about cars, the greenest change you can make is to try to eliminate your use of them. We need to remember that there isn’t a need to use our own set of wheels to get everywhere, or anywhere.

I suggest that we make some guidelines and goals for you. We can look at the paths between our home and destinations. If the place we’re going is less than a mile away, couldn’t we just walk? What about three miles away?  That potentially could be just a 15 minute bike-ride. It will keep us in healthier shape as well.

We should take a closer look into what’s available in our neighborhoods. Are there forms of public transportation, perhaps a city bus? Using it will save gas for our vehicles while increasing the efficiency of the use. The bus will drive anyway, why not use it? The more people that use public transportation, the better the system will become. If you’re in a bigger city, using the metro is probably the cheapest and quickest alternative to walking. It has the same concept as buses, they are running anyway, and the use of them will only make things better while saving you money.

It would be wise to track the result of the changes we make in order to live a greener lifestyle.  One way to do this is to keep track of our average mileage in our car per week over time. We should then take a look at why some weeks are higher than others and what you possibly could tweak in order to get to the lowest possible numbers. We can set a goal. If we normally drive 300 miles a week, we should see if we can get this down to 290, or maybe even lower. It is unreasonable to suggest that we should be able to bring this down to 0 miles per week, but imagine if we all could.