I'm dreaming of a benevolent Christmas

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Tourism need no longer be about excessive consumption and retrospective guilt. Eco-tourism and volunteer-holidays are catching on everywhere and there are travel operators who specialise in designing holidays for you that minimise environmental damage. Definitions of ethical tourism abound but, basically, it's about travelling responsibly.

Tourism Concern is an organisation at the forefront of the movement to ensure that the benefits of tourism are shared more equitably. Their book, The Ethical Travel Guide is said to be the essential route-planner resource.

Promoting self-catering holidays, living on organic farms, using only fair-trade or locally grown produce, staying at guesthouses that use only renewable energy resources, or contributing a day or two of work at the local charity, this guide is the ethical traveller's Lonely Planet.

Responsibletravel.com is a leading specialist travel operator that offers community-based tourism projects. A particularly exciting option is their 14-day "Christmas with Penguins in Antarctica" that allows you to spend a truly white X-mas with millions of penguins and other seabirds as they leave the Southern Ocean. For this trip the organisers contribute financially to local projects and minimise environmental damage by taking small groups and, as far as possible, exploring on foot.

Ethical travel choices don't necessarily need to be burdensome. A few correct choices will curb your guilt, such as figuring out whether hotel operators are cutting down rainforests to heat your water or depriving local fisherfolk of seafront land, or, alternatively, supporting local industries.

So, if you fancy trekking in Nepal, you could do it with the Annapurna Conservation Area Project, for example, which uses trekking fees to protect the local environment and culture, and to fund community schemes.

Travellersworldwide.com offers a whole range of projects from Brunei to Zambia, Bolivia and even India that you can volunteer for, in teaching, sport coaching and conservation.

Sri Lanka is a popular destination in our own backyard. One of its most authentic eco-hotels is the Galapita Eco Lodge, a small solar-powered lodge in the jungles bordering the Yala National Park in the southeast. Live in mud huts, eat local food, and entertain yourself not with television but a bumpy tyre-tube ride down the river. Or, put your energies to good use and volunteer at the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage, 90 km from Colombo.

Be aware that despite the rising numbers of ethical travellers, making responsible travel choices can be expensive - but don't be reluctant to put your money where your ethics are. At the end of the day, you will benefit hugely from it.