Travel apps can significantly change our travel lifestyle. From how we shop to where we choose to visit, sustainability apps have the power to promote a highly sustainable travel lifestyle.
So, what is a sustainable travel app and what makes it better than other travel apps? A sustainable travel app is a mobile app with information on how to explore the world without leaving behind a negative impact. Also known as green apps, sustainable apps can leverage innovation to help guide our choices and actions so that we have a meaningful impact on the places we explore.
Before traveling, we can drop in to our app or play store and determine which eco travel app will best suit our goals on the trip.There are lots of travel applications designed by eco enthusiasts to guide our sustainable travel journeys in various ways.
Some sustainability apps are developed to calculate our carbon footprint, some to locate eco-friendly eateries, or find sustainable accommodation. Read on to discover the best sustainable travel apps for 2022!
Hopper Trees– Sustainable Travel Booking App
Hopper Trees is a green app that makes sustainable booking possible. Unlike other booking apps, Hopper Trees will guide you to book eco-friendly hotels and flights all over the world. Through every booking you make, Hopper plants up to four trees to help offset your carbon footprint. What a great way to travel and make the world greener!
To manage this initiative, Hopper partners with Eden Restoration Projects for tree planting projects. Through this partnership, they can identify areas to reforest, hire and train locals, and protect and maintain the new forests. This initiative contributes to sustainability by not only offsetting carbon emissions, but by employing people in areas where reforestation is needed.
FairTrip– Eco-Friendly App for Local Travel
FairTrip is a collaborative app that allows travelers to find and share authentic local places and support local communities. Available on Android and iOS devices, this app helps users search for shops, activities, and restaurants that promote responsible tourism. The app’s mission is to change the dynamics of travel towards sustainability, and a style of tourism that can benefit the planet.
FairTrip is committed to helping travelers find authentic places for unforgettable travel experiences. It also aims to bring different cultures together, reduce poverty, and promote sustainable economic growth.
HappyCow– Best Travel App for Vegans
Looking forward to eating green while traveling? This green app was designed to help vegans find great food choices wherever they are visiting. It can help you access numerous vegan restaurants with the type of foods you desire.
What makes this a sustainability app? The goal behind Happy Cow is to help minimize meat consumption as much as possible.
This is one of the best ways of reducing environmental impact as the current agro practices for meat production are not only mostly unethical, but have a major negative impact on the environment as well. As a result, the Happy Cow eco app provides vegan-friendly restaurant guides. It shows purely vegan restaurants and those that try to minimize meat as much as possible.
The app is available in over 180 countries, meaning you can access vegan food almost everywhere. Through this app, you can access vegan food delivery hassle-free. It saves you lots of time as it makes it easy to find veggie restaurants.
Nosh Planet– Sustainable Travel App for Ethical Eateries
Nosh Planet allows you to find sustainable and ethical food regardless of where you are. It lists local-to-your-location eateries that incorporate ethical practices and activities. Rather than you having to research different restaurants in search of an ethical one, this sustainable app does it for you.
Nosh Planet has partnered with several independent organizations such as the Certified Green Restaurant to scrutinize hotels’ sustainability. It has also partnered with third-party organizations that research and bring onboard eco-friendly hotels. This makes it easy for travelers to purchase foods in hotels with eco-labels.
EarthHero- Best Travel App to Curb Climate Change
EarthHero is a travel app developed to help curb climate change by making people more aware of the effects of their actions on the planet. This app advocates for changes in individual actions to address climate change, including energy, food, and travel. You can discover tips on how to eat, transit, and live sustainably.
EarthHero also enables users to track their carbon footprint, alongside providing recommendations on how to reduce emissions.
GreenChoice
GreenChoice is a free travel app that allows you to buy ethical foods, hence avoiding practices that have a hard impact on the environment. This smartphone sustainability app, which is available on Android and iOS devices, is designed to help you shop sustainably and eat healthily.
With GreenChoice, you can set your dietary preferences, shopping values, etc., and search for the best foods that meet your requirements. It lists groceries with the most sustainable and cost-effective products. Also, it has unbiased GreenScore ratings that rank eateries in terms of eco-friendliness.
Tripoto- Best App for Vacation Planning
Tripoto is a vacation planning app designed by a community of bloggers and travelers with a common goal of making travel more sustainable. It allows you to discover unique and off-the-beaten-track destinations that are less frequently traveled, and plan your itinerary easily.
This sustainability app has a collection of handpicked hotels and homestays for your vacation. You can also find curated holiday packages with unique outdoor experiences that fit your budget.
Oneplanet Rating– Travel Review App for Sustainable Tourism
OnePlanet is a review platform dedicated to sustainable travel and tourism. Users can rate hotels, sites, eateries, and even cities based on their environmental friendliness and sustainable practices through this app. It aims to accelerate sustainable travel and make it the mainstream.
These reviews provide handy insights for travelers who plan to travel responsibly. You can rely on this app to access vegan eateries, responsible hotels, and eco-friendly means of transport.
Oroeco– Best Travel App for Climate Awareness
Oroeco is an eco-friendly app that aims to raise awareness about the impact of travel on global warming and climate change. It helps you track your carbon footprint and the overall impact on the climate. Its calculator is highly accurate, and you can rely on it to analyze the impact of all your activities, from traveling to eating.
After calculating your daily habits, you can find ways to improve. It gives you actionable tips on how to reduce pollution and save money while traveling.
iRecycle– Best Travel App to Find Recycling Partners
iRecycle helps you locate the nearest available recycling options. This app lists a wide range of recyclers where you can take any materials that you want to recycle. All you need is to enter your location details and then find nearby facilities for things you want to recycle. Ideally, it was created to allow people to find convenient recycling opportunities, therefore, minimizing waste.
The app is easy to use and it offers numerous ways to recycle all sorts of materials you can think of.
Good Guide– Best Travel App to Counter Greenwashing
The Good Guide app equips users with information about eco-friendly products. It consists of ratings for over 200k products across various categories such as health, food, baby care, survival, and more. Each item has a rating based on its impacts on the environment.
This tool also has a scanner feature that allows you to scan items before purchasing. After scanning, it provides information about the brand and provides alternatives should the product be unethical. While it’s only efficient for commercially available products in the US, it’s a great way to find healthy, safe, and green products.
Lime Bike– Best Scooter Rental Travel App
Looking forward to a carbon-free trip? If yes, Lime Bikes should be your ideal travel partner. This service provides electric scooters, bikes, and mopeds to help you travel sustainably. It is available in over 150 cities globally, you’ll easily access eco-friendly travel options that meet your needs.
Lime Bikes helps to revolutionize urban traffic through an electric, carbon-free future. Besides providing green micro mobility, Lime Bike partners with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to provide education about sustainability and promote cleaner modes of transportation. The organization is committed to achieving carbon-negative status in its entire supply chain by 2025.
Spinlister– Best Travel App for Bike Sharing
If you are physically able, riding a bicycle is arguably one of the best ways to travel around. Spinlister is a peer-to-peer bicycle lending app that lists local bicycle lenders. The platform connects owners with people looking to borrow or rent bikes for travel. You can easily find bicycle lenders in your location through this app and it helps you make an easy choice, rather than traveling by car.
Spinlister has an easy-to-use rental process and various theft and damage protection options to ensure convenience for both the lender and the rider. Recently, Spinlister introduced other categories such as snowboard, Ski, surfboard, and paddleboard renting.
Olio– Best Travel App for Food Sharing
Olio is an eco-friendly app that allows sharing when on the go. You can share extra food that you do not consume with people who need it through this app. It’s a great way to provide others with surprise food that you may have. In turn, you can also turn on the app and connect with people offering surplus meals. This sustainable app is a great way to reduce food wastage and save as much money as possible.
GoCarma– Best Travel App for Car Sharing
GoCarma helps reduce solo-driving, an act that leads to excess carbon emissions. It automatically matches travelers and connects different people traveling in the same direction, reducing the need to use numerous cars.
Through this app, you can get in touch with other carpoolers and have a ride together. The best thing about sharing a car is that it helps minimize emissions and traffic. Besides, it is an affordable way of traveling as it helps you lower the cost of transportation.
Locavore– Best Travel App for Finding Local Purchases
Purchasing locally grown foods is a more sustainable way of obtaining food. Locavore helps you to find local and in-season green produce almost anywhere. This app is available on both Google Play Store and App Store, so you can easily revolutionize your travel with ethical eating. It encourages travelers to shift to local farmers and markets for fresh, nutritious, and tastier products.
With this app, you can anticipate local commodities that are utterly delicious as it promises a thrilling dining experience. It is an easier way to locate and support local farmers. Besides, it educates you on the various vegetables and fruits and how to eat them.
Ecosia– Travel App for Curbing Climate Change
Ecoasia is a unique search engine that plants trees with 80 percent of its profits. Companies pay for advertisements to show up in search results.
The best thing about using Ecosia is that it provides relevant search results. It’s ideal for travel searches as it commits a large part of its revenue to save the planet from climate change. Ecosia claims to have planted over 129 million trees over 9,000 sites.
My Little Plastic Footprint– Eco-Friendly Travel App for Minimizing Plastic Use
My Little Plastic Footprint is an eco app designed to help travelers reduce their carbon footprint by choosing plastic-free sustainable alternatives. This app aims towards helping travelers acquire non-plastic materials that are often toxic.
To use this app, all you need is to select the key areas to reduce your carbon footprint, i.e., kitchen, garden, bathroom, leisure, travel, and household, so you can start planning how to reduce your plastic footprint.
Impact Store– Best Vacation App for Sustainable Shopping
If you want to shop sustainably while traveling, the Impact Score app comes in handy. It scans hundreds of thousands of supermarket products and provides ethical information on each product’s environmental impact. Its mission is to help you know the level of sustainability a product has by providing transparent, independent, and accessible information about it.
The Impact Store app is ideal if you want to reduce your environmental footprint through sustainable shopping. With it, you will easily understand the impact of your products and help you purchase from brands that meet your sustainability goals.
The Bottom Line
Going green and being eco-friendly is not as hard, thanks to mobile tech that allows you to access many services while on the go. Sustainable travel apps are a great way to promote eco-conscious travel and help you make responsible travel decisions. The wide range of eco apps should guide you to make the right decisions while traveling.
These apps will change your travel habits and make you more eco-conscious. All you need is to choose the ones you want and get going!
