Pinterest can be especially useful for discovering new places you want to visit, eat or things to do. One of the main reasons why Pinterest is better to compare to Instagram or Facebook is because it gives so an easy way to organize and store your boards and you can easily find them. There is no way to do this on Instagram or Facebook and I hate them just for this simple reason.
Pinterest has grown into a huge community of people and you can find there almost everything, from home decoration projects to recipes and ideas for your next dinner. The recommended boards that pop up gives you an idea of popular boards you may be interested in. You may create or subscribe to as many boards as you want.
People on Pinterest are inspired by nature this year, with searches for “nature travel” up +88%. More than two times more travelers use Pinterest vs. top online travel agency sites in 2019.
More and more people are discovering Pinterest especially when it comes to travel planning, with over 250 million people around the world who come to discover new ideas every day.
No matter what you’re planning, Pinterest has ways to make sure you’re ready for some thrills including a surf trip packing list or ways to plan for a surprise destination. Check out our adventure travel guide board for more.
Over the years Pinterest has evolved more into a search engine and it can help you find anything on the internet.
You can have boards for all sorts of things such as your travel wish list, beautiful beaches, hotels you want to visit, activities you want to try or country-specific boards.
Start by searching for travel pins and before you know it you’ll have lots of boards filled with places you want to visit.
How To Use Pinterest To Plan Your Trip
To get started with Pinterest, you’ll need to set up a profile on Pinterest, if you don’t have an account – this is a quite simple and easy process.
Here’s how a board works: Using Aruba travel for example, you would create a board called “Aruba travel.” Then, you’d search for terms that fit the type of trip you’re planning, such as:
Finding Inspiration Through Travel Photos
Things to do
Packing list
Tips
When you collect a bunch of images and resources about your desired destination, you can then search for other helpful information like ideas about what to eat there or what to pack, camera gear or solo travel tips.
Pinterest has a great user-friendly visual layout and shopping features that make it an ideal place to find travel inspirations, plan and book your next getaway.
How to travel eco-sustainably
Avoid bottled water Travel with sustainable, eco-friendly or fairtrade travel agencies Reduce consumption of meat Use eco-friendly products Book eco-friendly accommodations Support local economies
For more tips and tricks check our section Travel Tips
We all want to save money and be able to travel where we want. Having enough money to travel around the world may seem ambitious or impossible, but the truth is it often just comes down to choices. If you set up a plan and commit to achieving your goal, there’s no reason you won’t be traveling across the world. Saving money requires adopting new habits and often goes hand in hand with a greener lifestyle.
Saving money for a trip will also make you a better person.
5 Easy Ways To Save Money and Reduce Your Spending
Assess your current expenses — and make cuts.
First try to figure out where you spend most of your money, what you’re doing right — and more importantly what you might be doing wrong.
A smart way to tackle your budget planning is to save your receipts for all your purchases – big or small, and browse through your bank statements for a full month. Create an excel document and list all your expenses. Next to each item, write “need” or “want”. Once you’re done – extract the list of “wants” and look at the total. See how much you could be saving for travel?
Track your expenses for a month to see where your biggest expenses are or you can use apps like Clarity or Mint that does it for you. Clarity gives you a list of monthly expenses, from cable and electronic bills to streaming services. Cut out services you no longer use or didn’t even know you subscribed to, from Pandora and Spotify to Hulu or Amazon Prime, and save that money for your next trip.
Eat at home
Small expenses can add up when it comes to eating out at restaurants. But small changes also make a big difference.
Food is the culprit for a large part of your monthly spending budget. Without compromising on the pleasure of eating well, you can make significant savings by planning ahead and eating in more.
Constantly ordering food or going out for dinner with friends can add up quickly. But purchasing ready-to-eat meals will also set you back! Spend $50 a week on restaurant food, and in total, you’re spending $2,500 per year, near the national average. You may be surprised by how much you’ll save by cooking your own meals—on average $36.75 a week.
Having a figure in mind before you head out to buy some groceries will help you save money. It will be much easier to stick to your budget if you know how much you’re willing to spend. In order to change your habits, you can either pack your lunch the night before or wake up early to have time to make your lunch in the morning.
When you head to the grocery store to stock up on food, look for places that offer bulk shopping. Not only do they have organic food, but you can also save by buying in bulk as you don’t pay for the extra packaging.
Unplug And Turn Off Electronics You’re Not Using.
Appliances and electronics account for 60 percent of the residential electricity used, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That number has tripled in the past 30 years.
Use these tips from energy.gov to reduce the hidden costs caused by energy vampires in your home and save money that you can put aside for your next trip.
Unplug. Unplug. Unplug. This won’t work for your cable box or wireless router, which always needs power. But if you have an extra TV or another electronic device that you don’t use often, consider unplugging it completely until the next time you use it. This applies to phone chargers too. As soon as your phone has full power, unplug the charger from the wall.
Plug electronics into power strips, which let you toggle the power flow on and off. This means you can control the power use of clusters of devices so that they’re not consuming electricity when you’re not home. Using a light switch that turns power outlets on and off, if you have one, accomplishes the same end with even less effort. An advanced power strip makes it even easier by turning off idle electronics without any additional steps from you.
Curb idle time. Simply setting your computer to sleep mode or stopping a game and powering down your video game console instead of leaving it paused for a prolonged period, could lead to bigger savings.
Make smart upgrades. When it comes time to send your old electronics and appliances to the graveyard, consider replacing them with Energy Star devices. They have a lower standby consumption than your average device and use less energy all around. You can use this energy use calculatorto estimate how much energy it takes to power your electronics and appliances throughout the year and identify even more savings opportunities.
Open an Online Savings Account
Sign up for a high-yield savings account and automatically transfer money into it every month. Over time, you won’t even remember you have a savings account and by the time you do, you will have way more money than you thought you had.
Get a Second Job
You probably won’t like getting a second job but it can seriously help you save money and achieve your goal faster. Even a few hours here and there on the weekends is enough to make a serious impact on your savings. Here are a few examples of jobs that are flexible and pay relatively well: babysitting, landscaping, virtual assistance, bartending, tutoring, walking dogs, house cleaning, moving furniture, etc… There are hundreds of part-time jobs to be had, just check out Craigslist and I am sure you will find something you won’t mind doing for a little bit. And remember, it is only temporary.
For more tips and tricks follow our Travel Tips categoryHow do you save money? Share your tips below.
Some of the pollutants slowly trickling into the oceans are the chemicals in many sunscreens. As swimmers jump into the sea, their sunscreen washes away and filters into the water. Scientists who have become aware of the dangerous effect these chemicals have on coral reefs have developed the best reef-safe sunscreen brands to protect you and the ever-important marine life that inhabits our oceans. Knowing coral reef safe sunscreen information will help keep the sea beautiful and alive.
“Eighty-five percent of the Caribbean coral reefs died before 1999 or 2000. That wasn’t global warming. It’s pollution,” says Dr. Craig A. Downs, Ph.D., executive director of Haereticus Environmental Laboratory.
Making an eco-savvy choice, therefore, and using reef-safe sunscreen matter. And not only for the corals.
Dr. Downs and his group began taking a gander at particular synthetic concoctions and found that oxybenzone and octinoxate are the principle guilty parties. The reason they are so generally utilized in sunscreen is that they assimilate the unsafe UV beams. For humans, oxybenzone and octinoxate are chemical sunscreen ingredients that keep harmful UV rays from penetrating the skin, killing cells, and causing a burn. However, they have the opposite effect on coral reefs. These reefs, which are generally bright colors, end up bleaching to bone white under the harsh rays of the sun when they come into contact with these chemicals.
Oxybenzone, for example, is toxic in four different ways: it causes damage to the DNA that may lead to cancer and developmental abnormalities, it is an endocrine disruptor, it causes deformations in juvenile corals, and, lastly, it leads to bleaching.
Dr. Downs points out that certain preservatives found in sunscreens are also toxic: parabens such as the commonly used methyl paraben and butyl paraben, or phenoxyethanol
Another safe alternative to oxybenzone and octinoxate is non-nano titanium dioxide. Before purchasing your next bottle of sunscreen, also check the list of for any of the toxic preservatives we mentioned.
Hawaii is planning on banning certain sunscreens in 2021 that contain harmful compounds. In addition to oxybenzone and octinoxate, read the label on your sunscreen to see if it contains any of these other destructive chemicals: homosalate, octisalate, octocrylene, avobenzone, dimethicone, parabens, BHT, nanoparticles, propylene glycol, and retinyl palmitate.
Here are five reasons why your choice of sunscreen matters.
Sunscreens washed off into the ocean each year change the chemical composition of the water and make it a thriving place for viruses and bacteria. Some of these viruses attack corals, causing them to expel their life-giving algae, a situation that causes coral bleaching and the viruses spread to the surrounding coral communities.
2. Chemical Sunscreen Ingredients Can Bleach or Kill Corals
Besides viruses, research has also shown that some ingredients in chemical sunscreens can cause coral bleaching and potentially kill these organisms.
While most countries implementing sunscreen bans fight against oxybenzone and octinoxate alone, scientists have identified that butylparaben and 4-methylbenzylidene camphor can also have a similar action.
Using a sunscreen free of these ingredients is essential if we want to preserve the integrity of the marine ecosystem.
3. Chemical Sunscreen Can Harm More Than Corals
The compounds that cause coral bleaching can also affect other forms of marine life. Fish are also affected by oxybenzone and octinoxate.
Here is one example from Dr. Downs, who was on a working visit at the Bahamas, he was conversing with an administration worker at supper who shared how much he loved the coconut kind of the neighborhood angle they were eating on.
“We solicited the gourmet expert what kind from flavoring he put in it, and he stated, ‘simply salt.’ The coconut was some recombinant aroma of sunscreen. That is a substance aroma. It’s a terrible, dependable scent that will amass in life forms thus we were tasting it in the fish,” Dr. Downs explained.
So what can you do next time you hit the beach to prevent further damage? First of all, forget about aerosols.
These substances act as hormone disruptors and induce feminization in male fish. This leads to the interruption of their sexual activity, affecting the reproduction of many species
4. Sunscreen Pollution Threatens Local Economies
The death of coral reefs leaves many species of fish and crustaceans without a habitat; a situation that leads to the death of this marine wildlife. Combined with the affected fish reproduction, chemical sunscreens contribute to the extinction of many fish species.
This has two important consequences: famous diving spots become sterile and unattractive and less fishing possibilities for local businesses who base their subsistence on fishing.
5. Chemical Sunscreens Affect Humans Too
Chemicals in sunscreen are not only bad for the environment. They are bad for humans too. Besides rashes and allergic reactions, researchers also investigate the carcinogenic effects of both oxybenzone and octinoxate.
Other chemicals typically used in these products also act as hormone disruptors and can affect both fetuses if used by pregnant women as well as infants and toddlers.
Considering the negative impact chemical sunscreens have on both us and the environment, changing our habits and using an eco-friendly approach matters.
Photo credit: XL Catlin Seaview Survey/AP
Natural mineral sunscreens are undoubtedly a better choice; furthermore, you can use other eco-friendly ways to protect yourself from the sun while also safeguarding the global economy and our ecosystem.
Another option to help preserve the environment is to purchase sunscreen safe for coral reefs. Badger Balm is a family-run business that is committed to creating effective sunblock powered by nature to protect the world. One of the best reef safe sunscreen brands, their rigorous standards for their products makes it safe for children, adults, and the ocean, slowing the killing of coral reefs. In addition to other natural body products, they offer kids, sports, active and daily sunscreen safe for coral reefs so that no matter when you put it on, it’ll protect your skin and the environment.
Raw Elements was founded by an ocean lifeguard who daily watched beachgoers slather on chemicals that would wash off in the ocean, killing coral reefs. This set him on a journey to create sunscreen safe for coral reefs. To further protect more of the environment, they offer some sunscreens in plastic-free packaging to reduce the amount of waste that pollutes the land and sea. Their natural sunblocks are designed with safety and nature in mind at every step of production.
Raw Love sunscreen is made using coral reef safe sunscreen information for people who love jumping into the ocean to swim, dive, or surf. With all-natural ingredients, their sunscreen will protect your skin from the damaging effects of sun exposure, in addition to protecting the ocean. While they don’t offer the range of sunblock options as other best reef safe sunscreen brands, their product is both effective and safe for humans and marine life.
Having coral reef safe sunscreen information can help you make informed decisions when it comes to purchasing sunblock for your beach vacation.
Remember to double check the sunscreen ingredients and the label – each of our decisions matter to save the coral reefs!
