When I packed for California, I worried about the weight of my suitcase. I didn’t realise the heaviest thing I’d bring home wouldn’t fit inside it. It would be perspective. Flying across the Atlantic isn’t the opening line you’d expect in a story about sustainable travel. I knew my journey came with an environmental cost, and I couldn’t pretend otherwise. But my exchange taught me that sustainability isn’t defined by one flight, it is shaped by the thousands of choices we make once we arrive.Before my exchange, sustainability often felt like a checklist: recycle, remember a reusable bag, switch off the lights and hope I’d remembered to water my plant before leaving (I hadn’t). California changed that. Living on campus meant my feet became my favourite form of transport. Lectures, cafés, grocery stores and evenings with friends were all within walking distance. When I wanted to explore further, I learnt to navigate Caltrain, buses and light rail instead of hiring a car or squeezing extra flights into my semester. Travelling more slowly meant I experienced far more than I ever would through a plane window. One afternoon, I cycled to make a smoothie. That sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but it actually happened. At a sustainability event on campus, the blender only worked if someone pedalled the bike. It was surprisingly hard work for one strawberry smoothie, but it made renewable energy impossible to forget. Sustainability suddenly felt less like sacrifice and more like something people could enjoy together. My reusable water bottle became a permanent resident of my backpack, travelling almost as much as I did. Standing beneath Yosemite’s waterfalls, walking along California’s coastline and discovering local communities reminded me why those small habits mattered. These places don’t simply deserve admiration, they deserve protection. The biggest lesson from my exchange wasn’t that I became a perfect sustainable traveller, I definitely didn’t. It was that meaningful change rarely comes from one grand gesture. It grows through ordinary decisions: walking instead of driving, carrying a reusable bottle, supporting local businesses and taking the time to truly know one place instead of rushing to the next. I left Scotland believing travel was about seeing as much of the world as possible. I came home believing the best way to travel is to leave a lighter footprint while making a deeper connection with the places and people around you. Perhaps the greatest souvenir from my exchange wasn’t something I packed at all, it was the realisation that the best journeys don’t just change where you are. They change how you choose to travel forever.
