How can we promote green hotels, eco-hotels and other sound travel practices while promoting RVing? In reality, the majority of RVers out there lead a greener lifestyle than most normal citizens. This is something I think about quite often yet some may say it’s just a way to feel better about it.
RVs are smaller than most homes, condos and apartments. This is a smaller space to heat and cool. Like your car, they warm up in the sun and don’t heat the heat running as much as a house.
RVs have fewer gadgets and appliances. We make do with less and fewer gadgets are running all the time consuming power.
By the nature of their designs, most systems are conservative and use fewer resources. Toilets flush with little water. Fridges are smaller and well insulated to conserve energy. Most RVers try to minimize the amount of time they spend with sewer hookups. So they use less water in showers and cleaning.
The average RVer drives a few thousand miles a year. Compare this to the average fifteen thousand miles driven by workers and commuters. And then there are transport trucks and people flying in jets.
Many SUVs and trucks driven on a daily basis do not get much better mileage than the RVs driven a few thousand miles a year. In fact, the AllStays diesel RV gets 14-19 miles per gallon. I often fill up at the pump next to someone getting worse mileage in their daily vehicle. Of course not all RVs get this kind of mileage. Many are down to around 8-10 miles to the gallon. This is just to note that not all of them are that bad.
RVers are not using the typical 100 gallons a day for a two person family. Many RVers have only a 30-50 gallon fresh water tank and go for days with just that.
The biggest issue I still see to deal with is the use of disposables in order to conserve water. This is a catch 22 situation and one we need to think about carefully in our planning. A camper may not want to wash or use water so they use disposable things and throw them away producing more trash. At the very least, we should make sure our disposables are made of paper or are a recycled product. Avoid styrofoam products.
“Avoid styrofoam products.”
Why on earth would one avoid styrofoam products that can be reused multiple times, whereas waxed paper products break down after one use? Styrofoam is perfect for inexpensive ice coolers (it lines the more expensive plastic & metal ones) & many fast food joints give away perfectly good drinking cups that can be reused many times & hold many different types of liquids.
I get styrofoam cups on occasion when I don’t have a choice. And I do re-use them over and over again, to the complaint of others I travel with sometimes. But most people don’t. They just toss them in the trash and get a new one every day at the same coffee place or whatever. The problem is that it takes decades if not a hundred years to break down. It doesn’t dissolve like other materials do. And I find them in forests, parks, canyons, rivers, on top of mountains, all over the place. If they could take the same product and make it breakdown into compost, that would be ideal.