My family and I have been leading a low-waste sustainable lifestyle for many years now. We’ve even managed to do away with the dustbins at our home. We’ve achieved this by reducing the waste we generate and by taking care of the waste that we do generate, ourselves, right at home. We’ve reduced our consumption significantly, we compost all our wet waste, buy as much package-free as possible, shop mostly from Indian sustainable brands, avoid all sorts of disposable products and recycle whatever little dry waste we generate.
But what happens when we travel? Is it possible to generate no waste and not trash anything when you travel? Especially when travelling with kids?
Yes, it is!
Here are a few tried-and-tested tips for a zero-waste travel experience with kids:
Carry your own reusables
One water bottle for each family member so we don’t have to buy any bottled water. This is probably the easiest thing to do! Once you do this, you’ll realize you can refill water from a lot of places. Every airport, every railway station or any place of public transport, in India and internationally, has water refill stations. Public places like parks also have refill stations. If you don’t find any, you can easily refill your bottle at any café or restaurant. I’ve never been refused! If you are staying in a hotel, just ask them to refill your bottles with whatever water they drink themselves. Even if hotels provide bottled water to guests, their staff most probably doesn’t drink that. All you have to do is ask!
Cloth napkins and hand towels to last us the entire trip. This ensures we don’t use any paper napkins. A lot of people ask me what’s wrong with paper napkins. Well, they are made of paper, which is made from wood pulp, and is a big cause of deforestation. A really easy way to avoid this is to carry your own cloth napkins. Especially important when travelling with kids!
A few cloth bags and pouches to avoid plastic bags when we buy something. Small cloth pouches are very useful to buy things like fruits. On a trip to Georgia, we ended up using these at a grocery store, instead of taking their plastic bags to weigh and buy fruits. We weighed them in our cloth bags, put the stickers on our bags and no one had any issue, despite them not understanding our language.
Containers and cutlery to avoid plastic ones. While travelling with kids, I recommend carrying a few steel straws and a steel knife, too. The containers are a boon! You can buy fruits in them, get any sort of food packed and even eat out of them. You will end up avoiding so many disposable plates and containers.
Reusable coffee cups are the most useful thing to carry! We’ve used our coffee cups for coffee, tea, juice, fountain cola… Basically anything you want to drink that’s served in a disposable cup can be had this way.
Wetbags to store your dirty cutlery, napkins, etc, while travelling. These are waterproof, leakproof and smell-proof bags that you can easily find online. Most cloth diapering brands offer wetbags. These are especially useful while travelling with a child, and are great for soiled clothes, too.
Reusable cloth diapers and menstruation products so you don’t leave your waste behind. We went on a trip with my son, when he was 9 months old. As we have exclusively cloth diapered our son, we didn’t want a trip to be an excuse to stop that! So I carried all the diapers, along with a detergent and, every few days, we washed them. While choosing a place to stay, if you can find some place with a washing machine, you are sorted! I also carry my cloth pads and menstrual cup if my period is due while travelling. A cup is the easiest and most convenient thing to use while traveling. But even if you don’t use that, cloth pads can be washed very easily.
Carry your own toiletries
We carry everything from our soap and shampoo bars to toothpaste, brushes and moisturizers, so we don’t have to use anything that’s given in tiny travel-sized packaging in hotels.
Pro Tip: Return everything before you use the room. While checking-in, ask the staff to come to your room and take them away. Because, otherwise, the hotel will most probably trash it all for hygiene reasons. Even if you don’t use it!
Eat fresh instead of packaged
When we travel, we like to enjoy local food instead of packaged snacks. We also carry a box of dry fruits, peanuts, dry berries and some dry snacks like makhanas from home, which are very handy when travelling with a kid. My son loves fruits, so we just buy a lot of package-free local fruits for him, instead of things like chips, which, in any case, aren’t good for him!
For the flight or train journey, too, we carry easy-to-eat stuff like paranthas and theplas, from home, so we don’t have to eat what’s offered on flights. While returning, you can get some local food packed in your own containers, to avoid plane/train food that will most probably be served in disposable packaging.
Besides creating less trash, we also try to use public transport, as much as possible, when we travel. It’s better for the environment, of course, but it’s also super fun for kids! We love walking, so we make it a point to carry a light stroller in case my son gets tired. It helps us avoid hailing a cab.
Travelling zero-waste with kids is possible. We are doing it, so can you. All it needs is a little bit of planning and mindfulness. And trust me, you are good to go!
