Our best zero-waste travel tips to reduce your footprint

As full-time travelers, we take a lot of transportation, live in multiple apartments, eat out at restaurants, shop at markets, taste new snacks, and enjoy exploring our beautiful planet. Since we explore much more than the average person, our impact on the environment is very much a concern for us.

In the article, we will be sharing tips on how we reduce our impact on the environment that we apply while we travel but many tips you can easily apply at home. While we are nowhere near perfect zero-waste, we aspire towards it and are improving our ways every day. Everyone’s daily action can drastically make a difference because we only have one beautiful planet earth and we need to take care of her!

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Tip #1 – Apply eco-friendly best practices that you would at home

These are basic best practices but they are worth remembering for people that aren’t familiar with them:

• Switch off electricity at night. We like to turn off the wifi router, TV and other appliances before we go to bed. Not only does this reduce electricity consumption but you get less radiation from EMF emitting devices
• Turn off the faucet when brushing your teeth or taking a shower.
• Make use of natural light as much as possible. Not only does artificial light use energy, but it is also bad for you due to the blue light they emit. 
• Store information digitally and opt-in for digital mail. Since we sold most of our possessions, we digitize everything and opt-in for all communications, like bank statements, to be digital.
• Close the blinds before leaving your apartment, especially if you leave early in the morning. You will appreciate finding a cool place once you return.
• Use a pressure cooker – they cook in half the time and use way less energy.
• Turn off the lights, A/C, and other nonmandatory appliances while leaving your home, apartment or hotel.

Tip #2 – Carry a Zero Waste Kit

As we shared in Mrs. NN carry on packing list for long-term travel, we travel with a Zero Waste Kit. It might not be the first thing you think to pack in your limited space but it is one of the most used items we carry with us. This kit is currently made of the following articles:

• One foldable grocery bag – very handy for groceries or an additional bag to carry items in transit. Folds up very small and I always keep it on me
• Premium Reusable Mesh Produce Bags with Tare Weight Tags – We do a lot of grocery shopping and we aim to use zero plastic bags. These have been super handy for fruits and vegetables.
• Vremi Silicone Food Storage Containers with BPA Free Airtight Plastic Lids – This kit comes with 4 collapsible containers of different sizes. They are a great way to reduce our footprint when we need to pack our food on the go. They can double as great storage containers too. We took the two biggest ones and each of us carries on. 
• Handkerchief Cloth – to use instead of napkins and tissues.
• Set of bamboo chopsticks + fork + spoon + knife + straw – We broke the previous kit that was gifted to us, so we were quite happy to find one during our stay in Bali back in March (similar to this reusable bamboo kit).
• Simple Modern Wave Water Bottle – This water bottle is insulated so it can keep water hot (for 10 hours!) or cold (for 24 hours). We use the 17 oz capacity but you can get up to 34 oz if needed.
• Hydration Pack Waterproof – We put this in my backpack when we go hiking. It can store up to 3 liters, which is usually plenty for a full day.
• Reusable water bottle – We bought this secondhand and added to the collection recently because we found we wanted to get juices a lot and I wanted to avoid using plastic cups.
• We also pack spice containers that we refill when we run low
  • Sea Salt + Turmeric + Black Pepper 

Here is what our zero waste kit looks like put together

Tip #3 – Practice bulk shopping

We like to go to zero waste stores or bulk stores where we can bring our own reusable container to purchase products. Every country has a different level of awareness about the environmental impact of plastic and other non-reusable materials so we aren’t always able to find these stores.

We have been able to find bulk or zero-waste stores in Montreal, San Francisco, Lisbon, Porto, Chiang Mai, Da Nang, Bali, and Taipei but we were having trouble doing the same in places like Puerto Vallarta, Oaxaca City, San Miguel de Allende, Aruba, and Kotor. 

As you can see, not every country is equal when it comes to zero waste stores and bulk grocery shopping. Our best alternative is usually to go to the local farmers market (instead of mainstream grocery stores). 

Tip #4 – Say No to plastic

While our Zero Waste Kit helps us reduce our plastic usage, we often see products that come pre-packaged in plastic (Thailand is exceptionally good at that unfortunately). We will often check if the vendor has the product unpackaged available and use our reusable bag or we will simply walk away from buying it and look for a different vendor. We say no to plastic as much as we can but are definitely not perfect in this area, many of the grocery store products we buy do have some plastic packaging but we do what we can.

Tip #5 – Volunteer for beach cleanups or trash pickups

We have been on a few beach cleanups since we’ve visited a bunch of islands over the past year. This is a good way for us to give back to the beautiful places that we have enjoyed. For example in Koh Lipe, in half a day with about 15 people, we managed to pick up a few tons of waste. This was quite impressive to see how much trash is in the oceans, beaches, and islands – definitely a huge turn off from using plastic. A great organization to volunteer for beach and environment cleanups is Trash Hero.

In Taiwan, where we are currently staying as we are writing this post, we did a beach cleanup with a smaller group and collected around 400kg of trash. During the cleaning on FuLong beach, the organizer likes to read the label of plastic bottles to see where they come from and many arrive from foreign countries by the current.

Tip #6 – Share information with others

While we still have a long way to go, we try to share what we do on this blog or with the people we meet along the way. We have opportunities to show off our zero waste kit when we go on hikes or do our grocery shopping and they make for great conversation starters. We are surprised that only a few travelers come as prepared as we are so we hope we can inspire some small habit changes.

We also hope that this blog can help inspire you to think about some small habit changes to reduce waste! (Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to receive our future blog posts and get some exclusive content).

Tip #7 – Walk or use public transportation to get around

This one is pretty easy for us since we don’t own a car but even before our nomadic life, we also did not own one and really enjoyed using public transportation (train, bus) or ride-sharing services. Our default local transportation method is walking as it is always a great way to stay active. 

Tip #8 – Slow down

By not needing to rush your way to many sites, you reduce your transportation usage significantly, which is another advantage of slow travel. Also if you’re not in a hurry, you can choose to take a train instead of a flight. You also stay in the same place for a longer period of time, which reduces the amount of one-time usage or convenience items.

Tip #9 – Reduce flying

OK, this one is a biggie because we know that the carbon emissions from an airplane flight have one of the biggest impacts on the environment. As nomads, we admittedly travel and fly much more than the average person. We are aware of this, are very thoughtful about our decisions, and do what we can by practicing slow travel, living as minimalists, not owning a car, cooking most of our meals, and adopting the principles we mentioned above. 

We also prefer long bus rides over quick flights when visiting a given country (as we did in Malaysia recently to go from Langkawi to Cameron Highlands to Kuala Lumpur) or currently in Taiwan by using the really good rail system to go around the country. It’s also a great way to discover the country by going through spectacular countrysides. And again, it’s not about perfection but about being intentional and aspiring towards zero-waste.

Tip #10 – Having fewer children

The topic we’re about to discuss can be a subject of controversy, but we believe it’s essential to consider it in the broader context of combating CO2 emissions. When it comes to children, it’s worth noting that on average, they may contribute to approximately 60 tons of CO2 emissions per year. To put this into perspective, it’s equivalent to traveling around 100,000 miles by air, which is less than the amount of air travel we experienced during our initial 5 years of nomadic travel.

So those are our tips for reducing the impact on the environment while traveling. What about you? What other tips are we missing that we should include? Please let us know by leaving a comment in the comments section below!