“Green” businesses have been flooding the market, leading well-intentioned but overwhelmed women everywhere to wonder which “environmentally-friendly” products and “green” practices really make a difference.

So, what's an eco-conscious girl to do when planning a vacation? To make things easier, I have narrowed down the endless green options to a simple 20 suggestions that won’t hamper your trip to New York State but will make you and the whole planet healthier while you're having fun!

PLANNING & PREPARING
1) Consider an eco-friendly sailing trip rather than cruising. Motor boats and cruise ships spill oil and sewage, disturb fish habitats, and use thousands of gallons of fuel per hour. Wild Yacht Charters takes its environmental responsibility seriously and donates a percentage of profits to ocean conservation. New York State destinations include New York Harbor, Long Island Sound, Sag Harbor, the Hamptons, Montauk and Shelter Harbor.
2) Take a break from theme parks and give adventure travel a try. White-water rafting is available at Letchworth State Park and on the Hudson River, and hiking trails abound at the Ward Pound Ridge Reservation in Westchester County and throughout the Adirondacks.
3) Become an ecotourist—responsibly travel to natural areas in ways that conserve the environment and improve the well-being of local people.
4) Sign up for a Sierra Club family adventure in the Adirondacks. The Sierra Club uses the green principles of responsible, Leave No Trace, minimal impact camping.
5) Use online maps or your car’s satellite navigation system. Map paper is difficult to recycle because of all the ink used.
6) Avoid buying travel guides that quickly become outdated. Research your trip online, and print out only the necessary pages. Only 18% of the one million guidebooks printed annually are recycled. Greenopia.com produces a small, eco-friendly and user-friendly guide to New York City for those who strongly prefer to carry a book.
7) Pack lightly. Every additional ten pounds per traveler requires an additional 350 million gallons of jet fuel per year.

TRANSPORTATION
8) Travel in groups. Share a cab to double the fuel efficiency, or even better, take a bus. A bus uses the same amount of fuel to travel five miles as a car uses to travel one mile.
9) Travel by Amtrak. Trains use less fuel per person than airplanes. In New York, the Empire line will take you to the Finger Lakes and on to Niagara Falls. The Adirondack line will travels up the Hudson River to Albany, Saratoga, Glens Falls, and into Canada.
10) Rent a hybrid or natural gas vehicle. Enterprise Rent-A-Car rents hybrids in NYC, Albany, Ithaca, and Rochester.
11) Look into carbon-offset flights. You pay a small extra fee via the airline to companies like Treeflights which plants trees to withdraw carbon from the atmosphere.
12) Take a pedicab (a bicycle-driven taxi) in NYC.
13) Print your e-tickets at home on recycled paper. Traditional cardboard boarding passes are more difficult to recycle because of the ink used and magnetic strips on the back.
14) Refuse the disposable luggage tags at airports and get a reusable and colorful one like this NYC subway map themed tag that will help you spot your bag. Eliminating disposable tags for all U.S. travelers would save 60 million sheets of paper annually.

LODGING
15) Let the hotel housekeeping staff know it is not necessary to change your sheets and towels every day. You wouldn’t do it at home, and it saves a tremendous amount of water, energy, and detergents.
16) Stay at eco-friendly hotels that have facilities and programs to conserve energy. Some hotels, like the Golden Arrow in Lake Placid, have in-room recycling programs and offer incentives for those who arrive by green forms of transport.
17) Conserve water - a scarce resource in many vacation spots. Shorten your shower by a mere two minutes and you’ll save 10 gallons of water, on average. Imagine the impact if all guests in a 300 room hotel did this every day!

SIGHTSEEING
18) Use a digital camera instead of one that needs film. Solutions used to make prints from film are hazardous and require special treatment and disposal. (I am a formerly clueless photographer who can now take great pix, thanks to my new Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H20/B 10.1 MP Digital Camera !)
19) Support the economies of the sites you’re visiting by buying locally-made souvenirs, rather than mass-produced items made elsewhere.
20) Take a walking tour. Ecofriendlytours.com offers a fascinating walking tour of the Bronx, and you can take a self-guided walking tour on Walkway over the Hudson from Poughkeepsie to Highland, NY.