1) USE A REUSABLE WATER BOTTLE
2) CHOOSE ECO HOTELS
3) SAY NO TO DISPOSABLE STRAWS & SILVERWARE
4) CARRY REUSABLE TO GO CONTAINERS
5) BRING YOUR OWN TOILETRIES
6) AVOID PLASTIC APPLICATOR TAMPONS
Ladies one easy way you can reduce your single-use plastic consumption in daily life and when traveling is to avoid using plastic applicator tampons. Using non-applicator tampons is best but if you must use an applicator use a cardboard applicator.
All tampons have a big environmental footprint – the average woman uses 11,000 – 16,000 tampons in her lifetime and these are being thrown into the garbage, filling up our landfills – but the plastic applicators don’t biodegrade. By simply switching to cardboard applicator tampons you can reduce a huge amount of non-biodegradable waste over the span of your life (source), and cut down on single-use plastic consumption
7) TRY A STAYCATION
8) CARRY A REUSABLE SHOPPING BAG
9) SHOP AT FARMER’S MARKETS
Shopping at a local farmer’s market is a great way to avoid single-use plastics when you are traveling and when you are at home. This helps support the local economy and it is a fun place to experience local culture, try local produce and meet people. We take our daughter to our local farmer’s market almost every week and she loves it!
10) REUSE SINGLE-USE PLASTICS
If you end up having to use single-use plastic items when traveling you can at least reuse these. For instance if I forget my reusable water bottle I buy a plastic water bottle and then reuse it throughout my trip.
You can reuse ziplock bags – just wash them out and let them air dry as needed. You can also reuse plastic straws and plastic silverware. Remember in some places people would be overjoyed to have these items and would happily reuse them over and over again.
When we were in Malawi for our Safari & Charity Trip we drove through a very poor town. Children were running alongside our van screaming “plastic water bottles” because they wanted us to throw ours bottles out to them so they could reuse them.
I cried thinking about how wasteful we are in the western world and how much a single plastic bottle is worth to people who are less fortunate. We can all learn a lesson from this and stop taking our precious resources for granted.
WAYS TO AVOID SINGLE-USE PLASTICS WHEN TRAVELING
This is by no means an extensive list but I hope it will inspire you to do your part to help reduce global single-use plastic consumption. It is easy to get discouraged by the amount of waste and pollution we all create but even making small changes, like the ones I have suggested in this article, will make a big difference. Thank you for caring!
We hope that this article has inspired you to try to travel more sustainably. If you have any questions or responsible travel tips to share please leave these in the comments below.
Want to share you own travel tips by guest writing for We Are Travel Girls? Go to our Contribute page for guidelines and to submit your article.
Read More About Responsible Travel
- 24 Ways To Easily Live & Travel More Sustainably
- 20 Of The World’s Best Luxury Eco Hotels
- 6 Tips For Traveling More Sustainably
- 5 Ways To Be A Responsible Traveler
We Are Travel Girls Co-Founder Vanessa Rivers of GlitterandMud.com
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