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Plastic is one of the worst things for the environment and we encounter a lot of plastic while travelling. It’s not always easy to replace plastic with a good alternative. However, every little bit we do to reduce plastic while travelling decreases the pollution. Plastic lives on for 1.000 years. If we don’t do anything now, the pollution will only grow and get worse. Some things are very easy to replace while travelling!
I have collected 11 easy tips to reduce plastic while travelling that won’t cost you a lot of effort and time. You can bring (almost) all these items with you when you travel and you don’t really have to think about it while travelling. Because you’ve brought the alternatives, it’s so easy to reduce plastic while travelling. I promise you!
Read more: Why I’m Passionate About Responsible Travel
Replace tooth paste with tooth tablets and use a bamboo tooth brush
If we travel a lot, tooth paste is one thing that has so much plastic and we need to buy a lot while traveling. As an alternative – use tooth tablets! Most of these are chewable without water, so you just take a tablet, bite on it until there are no pieces left and brush your teeth with a wet tooth brush! Another way to reduce plastic while travelling is by using bamboo tooth brushes instead of the normal plastic ones!
Shampoo and conditioner bar
The packaging from shampoo and conditioners contains so much plastic. The entire thing is plastic so if we can use something different, we’ll reduce plastic and there are so many alternative options. Lush is a few amazing shampoo and conditioner bars. It’s super easy to use them – just take them with you in the shower and wash it over your hair! There are also containers where you can store the bars so your bags won’t get all dirty.
Read more: The Idea & Impact of CO2-Compensation
Bamboo or metal straws
We all know the images from turtles with straws in their nose. If you want to keep using straws – that’s fine but change them into bamboo or metal straws. You can re-use these and its way more sustainable and such an easy way to reduce plastic while travelling or at home! I like to drink my smoothies with a straw and metal or bamboo straws work perfectly fine.
Solid deodorant – made like a soap block from natural ingredient
Deodorant is almost the same as the shampoo packaging and we can solve it the same way as well! There are certain soap blocks to use as a deodorant made from natural ingredients.
Read more: Important Bali Etiquettes To Follow During Your Trip
Reusable cotton pads & bamboo cotton swaps
These are not only good for your wallet but even better for the environment. You can wash them after using it and they’re ready to use again! Normal cotton swaps are incredibly bad to the environment and they won’t be allowed in Europe starting from 2021. The alternative is using bamboo cotton swaps!
Menstrual cup or reusable pads
One for the ladies out there! Hygiene is not always guaranteed when we’re travelling but a menstrual cup or reusable pads are better for the environment and more hygienic! Especially the menstrual cup.
Read more: What Not To Do In Bali
Help and take part in a beach clean up
Beach clean ups are an amazing way to help the locals to clean the beaches. I’m sure we’ve all seen it when we were travelling. I have seen it when I was in Bali. As gorgeous as all the beaches were, I couldn’t ignore the piles of plastic build up on the side of the beaches. It may not be the first thing you think of doing during your holiday, but if you want to do good – this is a nice way to do it.
Reusable metal water bottles with water filter
Plastic water bottles are horrible, but we sometimes don’t have a choice. When we’re in a country where we simply cannot drink the natural water – we need to buy the filtered water from the stores. One thing we can do is taking a reusable metal water bottles with a water filter and it will solve this entire problem. If you don’t have bottle with a water filter, still use your reusable water bottle. It won’t solve everything and you’ll still use plastic but it will help. Every little thing we do helps!
Read more: The Bad Sides of Travel
Own reusable shopping bags
I’m sure we’ve all had this – we’re doing some grocery shopping and every little product goes in a separate plastic bag. When we’re on the market – every piece of fruit goes into a separate plastic bag. Its horrible, but sometimes we’re too late in saying we don’t need all those plastic bags. My suggestion is to bring your own reusable shopping bags and clearly show it to them in the hope they won’t get those plastic bags.
Read more: 7 Ways To Give Back To The Local Community
Pack your own toiletries
Almost every hotel room has those mini shampoos and conditioners for you to use. Incredibly sweet and a good service, but there are obviously packed in plastic bottles. We can do a little good by bringing our own toiletries and denying the free ones in the hotel. Perhaps they will use it for the next guests but at least it helps a little bit.
Cover up instead of using sunscreen
Sunscreen has many harmful ingredients to the sea life and the environment in general. I wasn’t aware of this to be honest. If we use a little less sunscreen, it already helps a lot. Cover up to protect your skin because that’s very important as well. If you don’t have the opportunity to cover up, I mean, your skin is incredibly important to choose whatever feels right for you!
Read more: How To Deal With Different Cultures
These 11 easy tips to reduce plastic while travelling are very straight forward while others are a little bit more difficult. As I have said before in other blog posts, I’m nowhere perfect in this but I do think we all have to try our best and reduce plastic while travelling. Even if you decide to follow 1 tip from this list – it’s incredible because it does have a positive impact on the environment. I know it can sound scary, annoying and time consuming to reduce plastic but I hope these easy tips changed your mind! Are you going to use any of these tips?
Love,
Melissa.
Such great advice here. The shampoo and conditioner bars are something I’m keen to try.
Let me know what you think of the shampoo and conditioner bars!
This is a great post for people who are beginning to start reducing plastics. I have been doing almost everything from the list.
That’s exactly my goal with this post! To make it easier for them and give some guidelines about reducing plastic. So happy you’re already using most of these tips, keep it up 😀
I love all of these tips! It’s so important for us to be more sustainable when we travel!
Thank you and I agree! 🙂
I love reading this! I have been guilty of traveling often so it’s great to read these tips to reduce plastic. I love all of these ideas. I am actually going to start using shampoo and conditioner bars, bamboo straw and toothbrush and bringing my own shopping bag
I’m so happy you are going to use a few of these tips. Travelling often is definitely not something to feel guilty about though! As long as we try to leave a more positive impact, it’s alllll good and fun 😀
Thank you for this ideas! Agree with you regarding hotel toiletries – I also rather use my own. But I have seen now in some hotels that they have fixed containers that are refilled – I think this is much better option!
That’s a much better option indeed! 🙂