Green Travel: Cut Paper Out of Your Plans

Between the brochures, tickets, maps, itineraries and guidebooks, traveling seems to eat up paper. And while it's a good idea to have a copy of your travel plans at your fingertips, it no longer necessarily means it has to be on paper.

Technology is making it easier to go paperless every day. There will probably always be a few travel items that do require some paper (um, a boarding pass), but there are tons of ways to travel without consuming an entire tree.

First things first, leave the brochures on the rack. If you're booking your trip yourself, you're probably doing your research online already. If you book with a travel agent, talk to him or her about your options. A good travel agent will know which places are the best fit for you, and they'll know a three-star in Mexico is not the same as a three-star in Jamaica. Once you have a short list of destinations, research the hotels and cities online.

When you're booking, always go with an e-ticket. The old airline tickets used 10-plus carbon-copy pages about a third the size of a piece of letter paper, but e-tickets use a couple of letter-size pages—meaning you're saving some paper and printing your ticket on paper that can be recycled.

Once you have the itinerary set, organize the details online, rather than printing a full itinerary out and carrying it everywhere you go. Most travel agents have been using online organizer software for a while, but if you book your own travel, or your company has someone on staff to book corporate flights, you may want to Click Here. You just e-mail TripIt your travel information—from flights to car rentals to hotels—and their software organizes your trip for you to access online or on your cell.

Once you're on the ground, nix the maps. When possible, use GPS to find your way around, or better yet, ask the locals. Instead of carting around a clunky guidebook, create a personalized travel map including must-see places and travel routes using Google Map's My Maps function—just e-mail yourself the URL and you can access it anywhere.

If you can't fathom the thought of traveling without a guidebook, make it a light one (in other words, no glossy pages). But keep in mind a lot of travel tales include the line: "So I ripped out the pages for {insert city here} and my backpack was soooo much lighter." A waste of money and paper.

A final thought: don't over-plan. Everybody knows half the fun of traveling is getting lost and finding off-the-radar places on your own.