Minimizing waste when travelling
We were recently lucky enough to take a baby-moon in Portugal - while it's best not to fly at all as flying anywhere probably negates all our zero waste efforts in terms of the fuel used, when living on an island with little sun we need to fly to get some much needed vitamin D and sanity - this post covers some of the ways we minimized our waste on the trip.
Things to pack
1. an empty water bottle for the airport so you can fill it up on the other side and when you are sightseeing - I usually have a glass one but brought a plastic one for weight and durability
2. snacks with you for the airport/plane - fruit, nuts, seeds, granola bars work well. If going on a longer flight try to eat your meals before you fly
3. your own bar soap to avoid using individually packaged hotel soaps - I brought my shampoo bar and bar of soap in a wet bag so that when we were packing them up wet from the hotel they would keep the rest of our bag dry
4. a keep cup so that you can get drinks on the plane or during your outings
5. handkerchief/napkins to use in restaurants
6. travel straw and cutlery that you can use in places without real cutlery
7. books from the library or download e-books instead of buying new ones at the airport or book stores - added bonus of being cheaper (e-books) or free (library)
Here is what my items look like (minus the snacks, napkins, straws and cutlery)
While out and about
Eat indoors
I know this is a hard one, especially on a sun holiday, but when choosing to eat in a restaurant we found that the outdoor options usually had more disposable/single use items, even in a food court - if we ate in their food area they would have given us glasses and cutlery but in the open area we got disposable cups, napkins and cutlery.
Ask for no straw with all your cocktails/drinks that typically have straws - try not to be too disheartened when they come with one anyway - some days we got 2 straws when we asked for none multiple times :(
Fill up your water bottle before you leave the hotel or find fountains along the way.
Use your napkins, straws and handkerchief when eating out - again try not to be too disheartened when they clear away the table throwing away items that were not even used. We tried to highlight in some cases that the napkins/cutlery were not used but they did not seem to take heed and threw them out anyway.
Try not to use sunscreen or make your own - sit in the shade and wear hats instead of using sun screen. Hawaii is looking to ban sunscreen as the chemicals are harming the coral reefs - article here. Another really interesting post about the harm of using sunscreen here including a recipe to make your own less toxic option - I've seen simpler ones with 2-3 ingredients which you could look up should you wish.
Re-use your towels in the hotel to reduce laundering - most hotels have a policy to only refresh towels you put in a specific place. Although we tried to follow this - our towels ended up getting replaced anyway :(.
Bring your keep cup to the pool - the pool side bar that we used provided glass cups if you stayed at a table but plastic cups if you went by the pool. We ended up only having drinks in the table area as a result when we much rather would have liked to have drinks by the pool. If we had thought to bring our keep cup down we may have used that instead.
End of stay
Give feedback to the hotel on the various areas you may have noticed they can improve on from a sustainability perspective. I'm currently drafting a letter that I will send to the hotel outlining the issues, possible solutions and what it means for them in terms of savings for each area if they were to make changes - I will share here once I finalise and send it in.
Most of all, enjoy your trip - be mindful to appreciate how lucky you are to be in a position to travel and try not to be too disappointed when your efforts to reduce waste are foiled by wait staff or if you forgot something and need to use a disposable item.
