The immersive cooking workshops ($175) aim to empower immigrant and refugee women. “It’s not about visitors sharing their skills with the locals,” Michal Alter, a founder of Visit.org, said. “It’s about the community sharing their experiences and history with the visitors.” Other experiences visitors can book on the site include an art workshop in Siem Reap, Cambodia ($18), and a five-day wine tasting tour in Moldova ($594).

Generally speaking, sustainable travel simply means being open to other cultures. “Dare to talk to someone you usually wouldn’t talk to,” said Mr. Glaesser of the World Tourism Organization. “Leave a positive footprint, whether it’s a local purchase or a kind of respectful economic or cultural input.”

Here are more practical tips for traveling sustainably that won’t blow your travel budget — and in some cases will save you money.

Check for Certifications

There are dozens of different green certification programs, making it difficult for travelers to know what’s what. Is Green Globe the same as Green Key? Is Travelife the same as EarthCheck? Look to see if the plan is recognized by the G.S.T.C. by checking their website. The group holds recognized certification plans to certain baseline standards, requiring that hotels or tour operators obey local labor laws, promote their services accurately, and support local infrastructure and community development. Systems can be gamed, of course, and not all green hotels are equal. Nevertheless, “I’d say that any kind of accreditation a hotel has is a good thing — some are better than others but something is better than nothing,” said David Ville, the group sustainability manager for Thomas Cook Group, a British-based global travel company.

A green or energy-efficient hotel need not translate to a higher price. Indeed, one of the properties under the AccorHotels group of properties is Red Roof Inn — one of the more frugal chain options in the United States. Don’t be afraid to do a bit of research to make a determination. On the higher end, I looked up five-star hotels in Manhattan for a weekend in November. The New York Edition hotel, which is LEED certified (a U.S. certification program for green buildings), and the NoMad (LEED Gold certified, a more rigorous level of certification) came up at $404 and $364 per night, respectively. The nearby Langham Place and Gramercy Park hotels, without LEED certifications, were more expensive, at $484 and $419 per night, respectively. I’m cherry picking, but my point is that green certification doesn’t necessarily translate to higher prices.

Consider a Tour Operator

Tour operators are not as widely used in the United States as they are elsewhere, but large organizations like Thomas Cook have the leverage to make a difference in sustainability, particularly in its trickiest area: flights. Air travel leaves an enormous carbon footprint — by some accounts, a round-trip flight from New York to Europe can create a warming effect equivalent to two or three tons of carbon dioxide per person. One way to help is to patronize an airline that uses renewable biofuel: There are a number, including United Airlines, Singapore Airlines, and Alaska Airlines, which is experimenting with a fuel blend partially powered by leftover branches and stumps from timber harvests.

Another is to turn to an operator with its own planes. Thomas Cook does so much volume that it has its own airline and, therefore, can control variables like flight capacity. “We don’t run planes unless they’re full, basically,” Mr. Ville said. “We run planes to places we know will be busy certain times of year.” Thomas Cook has set the goal of improving efficiency per passenger by 12 percent by 2020, he said, and it will try to achieve that goal with different strategies, including single-engine taxiing on runways and reducing onboard weight.