You’re visiting another culture, a guest who has the luxury of being able to visit another community. The last thing you want to be doing is leaving a trail of trash as you travel around. Here are five tips on how to minimize your trash trail when travelling abroad:
- Leave with what you came with. This means be prepared to carry your trash with you until you can find an appropriate place to dispose of it. This is especially important when you are hiking or camping. Not only is leaving your trash everywhere bad for the environment, but littering around tourist sites often upset locals and ruins the fun for everyone. There might even be fines if you’re caught.
- Re-use your water bottle. Staying hydrated while you travel is important to help beat fatigue, but that doesn’t mean you should be buying new bottles everyday. Unless you are in a country where you shouldn’t drink tap water, try washing and refilling your water bottle at night instead.
- Respect recycling rules. Find out if your hotel or hostel recycles, it’s not as rare as you think. Also, look out for public recycling receptacles. For example in London and Paris, there are well-marked recycle bins for newspapers on most busy streets.
- Only pick up what you are going to use. Are you really going to read all those dozens of pamphlets that you are picking up at every museum and tourist site? It’s waste if you’re going to stick most of them in the trash after you find them in the bottom of your back when you’re unpacking at home. Take a few extra minutes and look at what you’re picking up. Only take pamphlets that you think you actually might use.
- Avoid getting take out food that uses material that can’t be recycled. And this is hard considering take-out is practically defined by the unfriendly packaging. For a start, try looking for take-away that doesn’t come in Styrofoam containers. For example, crepe sellers in Paris will often just hand you a crepe with wax paper and a paper napkin, both of which can be recycled.