How We Generated Just a Handful of Plastic Waste During a One-Week Vacation

"When I go on vacation, I’m not going to be an environmentalist," Flegmež says clearly and loudly in this video we filmed with Curry and Love. Maybe it really does seem like a hassle to you that, on your hard-earned and long-awaited vacation, you’ll have to worry about how to travel and vacation in a way that’s as eco-friendly as possible. But with that kind of attitude and mindset, we’ve already ruined practically every beautiful corner of our planet. But we only have one. That’s why it’s (high) time for the slacker in all of us to take a step toward more sustainable travel and vacationing. ?In an effort to reduce waste, Manca and I have changed our lifestyle so much over the past few years that the mere thought of filling up a trash can with plastic on vacation makes us cringe. Above all, the zero-waste lifestyle has brought so many positive changes (for our physical and mental health, our wallets, ?, new friendships, and experiences) that it seems silly to us not to make an effort—even while traveling—to produce as little plastic (and other) waste as possible.

After all, the idea for Rifuzl was born on one of our vacations, on a beach in Greece. The final decision to open a packaging-free store in Slovenia, however, came while backpacking through Indonesia. ?

When traveling, each of us certainly produces even more waste than at home. When we’re at home, we know where to shop without packaging; the water in Slovenia is drinkable practically everywhere; we can cook in our own kitchen… ... but while traveling, all of that is much harder; you have other things on your schedule, and figuring out all the logistics just for a week or two seems too much of a hassle.

In this article, I’d like to share with you our specific experiences and the efforts we made to produce as little waste as possible on our last trip—in one week, we accumulated just a handful of it.

This is how much plastic waste we generated in one week—and even among these, there are quite a few paper receipts and a few tissues.

In January, we headed to Lanzarote—Manca for one week, and I for two. During the first week, we stayed in a small studio apartment; during the second week, I stayed in a house with the studio’s owner.

It all starts with preparation

You can do the most by starting to prepare for the trip at home and thinking through what you can take with you so you won’t need to buy and use single-use items along the way. We brought quite a bit of food from Rifuzl with us, such as:

• various nuts,
• Gabaroni pasta for one meal,
• enough rice for one meal,
• one serving of bulgur,
• protein and raw bars from Lizin vrt,
• Fržek okara cookies,
• Fruštek granola,
• "Winter Fairy Tale" tea,
• oranges.

We packed all this food into:

• food storage containers (i.e., “lunchboxes”—you can also find metal lunchboxes at Rifuzl),
• Recikliranka bags made from old curtains,
• used bags from various dry goods,
• Dantesmile cotton bags
• beeswax wraps (aka beeswraps).

I also brought along two utensils so we could eat our food on the go.

It’s true that this is extra luggage, but all of the items listed are useful for everyday shopping for fruits, vegetables, and other groceries. And we used these containers to pack our daily lunches for exploring the island of Lanzarote. An added bonus: we already had enough high-quality, nutritious food with us to prepare a few lunches and dinners, so we didn’t have to stop at a store right after leaving the airport.

Zero waste on the plane ✈️

This time, we were really well-prepared for the flight, so we didn’t accept any drinks or food. We flew with a low-cost carrier (I won’t be advertising them), so luckily the food and drinks were extra, and we happily munched on the pasta ? we’d prepared at home and packed in our food containers. As for water, we filled our bottle right in the restroom at the Venice airport after going through security.

If you’re traveling farther and don’t want to prepare your own food, at least bring your own utensils on the plane. The most practical—and definitely allowed—option is a wooden bamboo spork.♻️

As for waste, we saved on: a few plastic cups for water or other drinks, one set of plastic cutlery, and an airline meal where every tiny item is wrapped in plastic.?

Cost: cheaper than buying water and food at the airport or on the plane.?

Health: Definitely better quality food and more nutritious than airline food.

No plastic water bottles on an island where even the locals drink bottled water?

On a previous trip to Morocco, I decided to buy a water filter so I wouldn’t have to buy bottled water when traveling to places where the water isn’t drinkable (it wasn’t in that part of Morocco, so I ended up buying bottled water; they don’t have a recycling system there). On Lanzarote, the tap water is actually safe to drink, but it’s produced by desalinating seawater, so it contains a lot of minerals and tastes bad. Although the filter I bought only removes bacteria, the water actually tasted better after I filtered it. It’s also true that our bodies get used to a new taste in as little as a week, and by the second week, the water tasted completely normal to me.

I found information online stating that desalinated water is problematic in the long run, as the high mineral content can lead to kidney stones—though this is reportedly a process that takes years— so it has no impact on us, who are traveling as tourists for no more than a few weeks. One evening, the local I was staying with and I debated whether the water’s “undrinkability” might be artificially created so that everyone on the island would buy expensive bottled water from the store.

A friend who spends several months each year with his family on this island in the Atlantic Ocean told us that water is also available in returnable bottles, but this option is more or less only available to locals. You see, you can’t buy the bottles in stores; instead, there’s a company that delivers the bottles to your home upon request. And if you’re not a local, it’s practically impossible to arrange for this company to deliver water to you. Even those who spend several months in Lanzarote every year had a hard time making arrangements.

Restaurants serve water in glass bottles. But just as we were getting used to this, toward the end of the week, a restaurant served us water in a plastic bottle. We then took that plastic bottle with us and used it as an extra water bottle. So, in the end, we accidentally ended up with one plastic bottle of water ?.

♻️ In terms of waste saved: at least 2 liters per person per day, 4 liters * 7 days = 28 liters = 19 plastic water bottles.?

Cost: One plastic bottle costs about 1 euro, so we saved 20 euros just on water in the first week alone.?

Health: Perhaps desalinated water really is inferior to store-bought water, but for such a short period—just a few weeks—it doesn’t make much of a difference. I didn’t have any problems.

Food, Cooking, and Organic Waste ?

We prepared most of our food ourselves, though we did eat out a little. Lanzarote is a distinctly desert-like island; without additional irrigation, only lichens—along with the occasional cactus and small shrubs—grow here on the black volcanic rocks. However, if the soil gets even a little water, things grow quickly, as volcanic soil is one of the most fertile types due to its high mineral content.

As for livestock, we only saw goats, and we also found local goat yogurt in the stores, packaged in glass jars, which we had for breakfast. Fish is also a local specialty; we’d practically stopped eating it at home over the past year, but here it’s a key ingredient in most of their traditional dishes. We didn’t buy any ourselves, but we did treat ourselves to a traditional paella at one of the restaurants.

There are no compost bins on the island. They throw it in with the mixed waste. It’s true that organic waste will decompose at the landfill along with the rest of the trash, but the process takes much longer, and it releases the greenhouse gas methane; the trash cans will be fuller and won’t be as useful as they would be if they were turned into humus for plants in nature.

Once the supplies we’d brought with us from Rifuzl ran out, we bought fruit, vegetables, eggs, cheese, jam (made from cacti), and honey at the local market, and at a regular grocery store, we bought bread, goat yogurt (in glass containers), and salt (in plastic packaging), since we’d run out of it at home. The fruits and vegetables were mostly from other, greener Canary Islands (mmmm, finally some good, local mangoes, bananas, oranges, and passion fruit). Whenever we could, we bought organically grown produce so that even the organic scraps for compost wouldn’t contain toxic pesticides.

We collected the organic waste on the kitchen counter for 2–3 days, and then I took it outside the settlement and buried it under a desert shrub, where it would soon decompose and become food for xerophytes. Why bury it? First, so it doesn’t look like trash is being dumped there, which might encourage passersby to start throwing other waste there. Second, so the waste decomposes faster because it’s all together and isn’t dried out by the sun. Third, so the wind wouldn’t scatter it around.

We prepared our own breakfasts and dinners. We mostly bought bread, which was available at every small store, and we carried it home in our own canvas bag.

Since zero-waste perfectionism can deter many people from reducing waste, we think it’s only fair to show that we, too, aren’t 100% “picture perfect.” When we felt like ice cream, we bought some—a paper cone, mind you, but still. Same goes for candy; it’s not the healthiest, but sometimes you just need a sugar fix, right?

Manca found a zero-waste store on the island. It’s called Biomeco, and during our visit we stocked up on seitan, fruit juices, and peanut butter. Luckily, we also ran into the owner, Diana, and exchanged some experiences and ideas with her. It’s just a shame they don’t sell food in bulk—only cleaning supplies and lots of zero-waste products, such as steel bottles, straws, and bamboo toothbrushes, solid shampoos, cosmetics, and more...

♻️ As far as waste goes, they’ve kept it to a minimum: no plastic bags—only the glass yogurt jars had plastic seals to prevent them from opening.

? Cost: Based on our experience at home, locally and organically grown food tastes better and is more nutritious. Since we stopped buying “junk food” in order to shop waste-free, and since we make sure not to throw any food away, this way of shopping has actually turned out to be cheaper for us. Plus, we’ve supported the local economy.

? Health: Local, fresh food is incomparably better in quality than food that has been sitting in warehouses for years.

Cosmetics, hygiene products, sunscreen ?

We brought along Odori bar soap and Meze Cosmetics shampoo. We stored both in small metal containers for the trip—ones we’d had lying around for ages from candy or other cosmetics (use what you have ♻️).

We had toothpaste in small plastic tubes—yes, at first glance, the complete opposite of zero waste—but these are tubes we got by a strange coincidence many years ago because they had expired and the company was going to throw them away. Of course, even years later, there’s nothing wrong with them, and we save them precisely for travel because they’re so practical. Never forget that one of the rules of zero waste is to use what you already have. In fact, you do more harm than good if you throw away toothpaste that’s still perfectly fine and buy new ones in glass jars. Once you’ve got something, use it for as long as you can—even if it’s not exactly Instagram-worthy!

We had the Amon and Anis natural deodorant in a small, returnable glass jar (see the picture above).

The story with sunscreen is similar to that of toothpaste. We still have some sunscreen left over from way back in a plastic tube, which we have to use up first before we can start using the natural sunscreen in the glass jar from Amon and Anis.

♻️ As far as waste goes, we’ve cut back: soap, shampoo, and deodorant come with no packaging or have returnable packaging. For toothpaste and sunscreen, we’re using up the old ones while we still have them.

? Cost: Just like with food, high-quality, natural cosmetics are more expensive, but they last longer and are worth the price. We haven’t noticed that we’re spending more money because of these more eco-friendly products. We also brought along what we already use at home on our trip and didn’t buy anything extra.

? Health: Soap, shampoo, and deodorant made from natural, local ingredients, which are better for our health and much higher quality. Toothpaste and sunscreen from major manufacturers, until we run out.

Choosing a Location ?

In addition to how much (or how little) waste we’ll generate, I also thought a lot during the trip about the broader environmental impact of this trip—in terms of CO2 and so on. Lanzarote is an island that receives very little rainfall and is therefore desert-like. But tourism has brought in money that makes it possible to build a golf course with perfect grass ⛳️—which stays dark green 365 days a year—even in the middle of the desert.Lanzarote is certainly not the best destination in terms of the energy investment required for us, the people of this island, to create an environment that’s livable for humans. But nobody’s perfect, and this was one of the compromises we accepted. And definitely one of the compromises if I still want to pursue my favorite sport—windsurfing ??‍♂️?—which is at its best in destinations like this.But since the world isn’t black and white (well, if you look at these pictures, it does look pretty black), it’s important to mention the positive aspects as well. Thanks to the mild climate and pleasant 20 ºC year-round, the concept of heating or cooling houses and apartments is practically unknown here, which means significant savings in CO2 emissions throughout the year.

For our stay, Manca found an apartment on Airbnb where we could cook and prepare our own meals. We like to stay in authentic Airbnb studios where you get to know the hosts, because you learn a lot from them, meet new people, and support the local economy. Hotels are often foreign-owned, and we definitely don’t like them at all. In general, we avoid tourist spots (ironically, since we’re tourists ourselves ?‍♂️?).

♻️ As for waste, we managed to keep it to a minimum: we still flew, but it was a direct flight on a full plane, so we didn’t generate any trash.

? Cost: fairly affordable flights from Venice.

? Health: doing sports (hiking ?‍♀️, surfing ?‍♂️, windsurfing) and evenings on the beach ? without a phone—priceless!

What’s your advice? ☝️

Once you start reducing waste while traveling (and in everyday life), it’s hard to stop. In our experience, new ideas just keep coming—it’s even a challenge for us—and we always feel good when we take a new step.

I hope this post helps you plan your next trip and that we’ve given you some tips you’ll try out in real life. Just a heads-up: the tips above can be contagious, and once you start, there’s no turning back!

And if you can think of any other useful tips on how to travel with less waste, be sure to share them in the comments below!And of course, don’t forget to share this article with your friends on Facebook and Instagram! ?