Finding legitimately eco-friendly travel options is difficult, not to mention time-consuming. The gap between sustainability claims and practices can be quite large, and greenwashing isn’t always easy to identify.
But there are signs to look for. Researchers in Turkey recently identified five key categories to describe the most common forms of tourism-related greenwashing: eco-certifications, inadequate waste management, misleading carbon offsetting claims, destination-based overconsumption, and the use of the “green development” label to mask social injustice and environmental harm.
“Businesses facing demands for environmental and social responsibility frequently engage in gestures that are largely for show,” the authors wrote in a paper published in May in the journal Frontiers in Sustainability.
There are plenty of reasons to be concerned, the paper makes clear, but there are also ways to cut through the noise. Independent and robust certification systems play a huge role; local businesses are also important, since corporate chains are often associated with problematic greenwashing, particularly at the luxury level. “Sustainability must not be viewed as a communication strategy but as a structural commitment that is measurable, inclusive, and ethically embedded,” the authors wrote.
The first thing to keep in mind when you’re planning your trip is that it is going to have a negative impact. Any company telling you that it helps the environment, as opposed to explaining what it’s doing to reduce its footprint, is a giant red flag. Everything beyond that takes a little more effort to spot. Consider these things as you book your travel.
Do Those Little Cards Asking Me to Reuse My Towels Do Any Good?
Linen reuse programs, where you decline daily replacement towels and hopefully sheets, have become standard—and they do, in fact, save enormous amounts of water, as well as detergent and energy. If you’re traveling, you really should participate; many people still don’t.
In terms of assessing a hotel’s green credentials, though, a towel program should be standard practice.
PSA for any hotel operators: According to social psychology research, more people will participate if you use a “general norms” approach in presenting it. Placards should say, “Join your fellow guests in saving water”—as opposed to pitching it in more altruistic terms like “Help save the environment by reusing towels.”
Look for Substantiated Claims
The best way to evaluate a hotel is to look for credible third-party certifications from programs that set scientific benchmarks and involve mandatory audits, such as the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) and EarthCheck. The more widely-known LEED certification, the platinum standard in particular, is best-in-class in terms of a hotel’s construction but doesn’t tell you much about its daily operations or local environmental and economic impacts. In nature-rich regions, the nonprofit Rainforest Alliance also certifies hotels that meet certain sustainability and biodiversity conservation standards.
What to avoid: self-created credentials or eco-awards. Those signs on websites and at hotel check-in desks—“Best green hotel!” or “Voted most sustainable hotel in the city!”— are often marketing ploys or the result of some kind of paid promotion.
Many companies make zero-waste pledges but often rely on single-use products that are said to be composable or biodegradable but are not actually composted; they also use energy and new natural resources to produce, even if they’re composted later. Others make plastic reduction pledges that are often narrow in scope, referring to single items such as cups or cutlery but ignoring others; or switching to boxed water instead of bottled, even though the boxes are made with plastic and are not very recyclable.
Unfortunately there’s no easy tool for fact-checking such claims, since there are effectively no regulations governing what companies can say about how eco-friendly they are.
The main thing to keep in mind is that the burden of proof is on the company. If they say they’re reducing waste, for example, then spend a minute evaluating what they tell you about how they’ve done that—are there enough categories or products talked about that you can visualize some sizable cuts in waste? Also think about major sources of waste that they don’t mention. Often, businesses generate a lot of waste behind the scenes—do they mention waste that they’ve eliminated in housekeeping or kitchen prep, perhaps?
A good rule of thumb is that if something sounds too good to be true, it—unfortunately—probably is.
When you come across mentions of carbon footprint, whether it’s a hotel or a tour operator, the main thing to look for is whether they’re reducing their own emissions or relying on carbon credits to make the claim. Reducing direct emissions should always take priority. If they’re doing both, they will share details with you on the specific steps they’re taking to reduce direct emissions, as well as some context for why the carbon credits platform they use is reliable. If details are scarce, best to look elsewhere.
Influencers are another common source of misleading information, particularly those that are paid to create content about a specific business or region. Beware the socials!
Accommodation Extremes: Ecotourism and All-Inclusive Resorts
The ecotourism sector is a hotbed of sustainability falsehoods. The best way to evaluate an ecotourism hotel or tour operator is to look at how specific it is in its claims. If there’s talk about nature, is it mostly pictures with few details about how it minimizes its footprint? Or does it get specific? Businesses that put in the work are usually explicit about doing so. Meaningful sustainability efforts take time and money, and businesses that go to the trouble also tend to share the details of what that looks like.
There should be details about energy sources and water conservation practices (gray water recycling? rainwater tanks?); the types of local materials that are used and how they’re sourced, rather than general claims like “We use local materials”; how food is sourced, whether a hotel grows food on-site or names particular communities or farms it sources ingredients from; and how a company engages with local communities. Is there real engagement, or just extractive interactions and photo ops?
If there’s a wildlife component, are groups limited in size, and are they limited to viewing from a distance? If it involves unethical and often unnatural practices like feeding wild cats or riding elephants, that’s definitively not ecotourism.
Then there are all-inclusive resorts, which are often fundamentally at odds with sustainable living. They use large volumes of water to maintain landscaping and pools in addition to ongoing water consumption by hotel guests—who are often walled off from the surrounding area, where water may be more scarce. Resorts’ need to provide large quantities of food all the time means they rely on mass-produced, often imported food, and they generate enormous amounts of solid waste, light pollution from keeping lights on 24 hours a day, and coastal pollution from hotel operations, pool cleaning, and ground maintenance.
That said, if an all-inclusive resort claims to support the local environment and economy, look for details such as whether they disclose worker wages, source significant amounts of food locally, recycle water on-site, use biodegradable cleaning products and toiletries, implement zero-waste policies, and engage with local communities.
In either case, ownership can also play a role. If a business is locally owned, it is more likely to operate with its community and ecosystem in mind, and to keep profits local. The bigger and more distant the owner, the less incentive it has to coexist with its neighbors.
Question Everything
The bottom line for avoiding greenwashing is to ask what any given claim actually means. Whether it’s carbon emissions, nature conservation, or local livelihoods, the more detail a company shares about what those claims mean, the more you can trust it. If it’s vague and unsubstantiated, go somewhere else.
