Travelling is an expensive business. It can also be a time of much unnecessary disposables, as we want to make life easy for ourselves. We are on holiday after all.
So these are just some simple ideas to make your holiday a little bit lighter on waste. I’ve said it many times, but reducing waste is a journey, not an overnight thing. There are people who are amazing at packing very lightly and have entire zero-waste kits when they travel. They are awesome, but I’m not quite there yet. Here are some of the things I am taking:
Some very easily implemented ideas that work for me:
- Clear your fridge
Sort your fridge before you go. Don’t throw it all away, cook and freeze it or give the contents to someone. I’ve just taken a bag of random stuff from my fridge round to Lisa’s so she can do a really shit Masterchef invention test. I can’t wait to see what she makes out of Pineapple, Humzingers and ham.
- Invest in a durable water bottle
I’m pretty much plastic bottle free now. My kids, however, need some convincing to ditch the Fruitshoots. The easiest way to avoid buying a bajillion bottles is to take your own. We have some from One Green Bottle (pictured above) that have served us well.
To avoid expensive (and wasteful) airport/plane drinks, I take these bottles in hand-luggage, but make sure to take them empty, lest you get stopped by frisky airport security. I then ask a café or bar to fill them with water for me in the departures lounge, which everyone has been fine with so far!
The good thing about these bottles is that if you pop them half full in the freezer in the evening, you can take them out, fill to the top with water and they stay quite cool, as opposed to warm plastic bottle water.
- Take re-usable bags
I’ll generally take 3 or 4 lightweight bags that fold up really easily. Good for shopping at supermarket, farmers market, holding stinky old nappies, whatever really.
I’ll also generally take a couple of re-usable veggie bags (green bags pictures above) as they always come in useful for something! I think last time, it was for my not-quite toilet trained daughters dirty underwear, but they are great for all manner of things.
- Get a cutlery set together
You can get fancy ones, but mine is pictured above. Wooden spoon, fork and knife for all 4 of us, all wrapped in this facecloth thing I made out of an old towel and spare fabric. The smaller Cooke is literally the messiest eater ever so this is essential and saves taking disposable wipes.
6. Take a bit of laundry powder for handwashing
Also pictured above is my homemade laundry powder. Dan reckons there is absolutely no way I’ll get this through airport security, so I’ll keep you posted. If you don’t hear from me, assume i’m in Italian jail and send help.
And that’s it. It’s not much, but it’s a start. Toiletries is next on my list to sort so it’s not so wasteful, but I haven’t managed that this time. I feel I should really add that I find travelling, or actually just living, with children makes reducing waste incredibly hard. All the things they love come in multipacks and teeny tiny plastic cases for their teeny tiny shopkins (I would dearly love to murder whoever came up with f*cking shopkins).
So it really is about making small changes, as i find that one small change often leads to another.
Anyhoo, I am off on my jollies and shall see you in our lovely Saturday shop when I return!
Emily
