The customs officer at Athens International Airport looked at me like I’d grown a second head.
“You want me to put the stamp where?” he asked, clearly wondering if this was some kind of bizarre British joke.
“On this page in my passport, please,” I repeated, pointing to the tiny sliver of empty space. “I’m trying to avoid asking for extra pages because of the environmental impact.”
He sighed deeply, somehow managed to squeeze the stamp into the last remaining corner of my well-worn passport, and waved me through with a muttered comment that I’m pretty sure translated to “strange foreign woman.”
Look, I never claimed to be normal about this stuff. My obsession with low-waste travel started about eleven years ago during a work trip to Singapore, when I found myself standing in my hotel bathroom, surrounded by those tiny shampoo bottles and individually wrapped soaps, calculating the petroleum required to produce them, the shipping emissions to transport them, and the centuries they’d spend in landfill—all for my three-night stay. By morning, I’d drafted a manifesto on my phone titled “How to Travel Without Trashing the Planet,” which my friends now refer to as “The Incident That Ruined Holidays Forever.”
That’s not entirely fair. I still travel. I still enjoy it immensely. I just do it differently than most people, with considerably more preparation and occasionally puzzling behavior—like the passport stamp incident, or the time I tried to return used teabags to a cafe in Barcelona for composting, armed only with the Spanish phrases for “food waste” and “soil nutrients” that I’d hastily memorized. The barista’s expression suggested I might have been accidentally proposing marriage instead.
The reality is that travel and sustainability make uncomfortable bedfellows. Tourism accounts for about 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions when you factor in transportation, accommodation, food, and all the stuff people buy and discard along the way. The waste aspect is particularly visible—overflowing bins on popular beaches, plastic water bottles littering hiking trails, single-use everything in airports and hotels. It’s enough to make any environmentalist consider permanent staycations.
But I believe that travel, done thoughtfully, has tremendous value. It builds cross-cultural understanding, supports conservation efforts in many regions, provides livelihoods, and creates the kind of transformative experiences that can turn casual tourists into lifelong environmental advocates. The goal isn’t to stop traveling—it’s to transform how we do it.
So let’s talk practical strategies, starting with the obvious one that you’re probably already doing: carrying a reusable water bottle. Great! Gold star! Now let’s get to the stuff that makes a bigger difference.
The waste hierarchy—reduce, reuse, recycle—applies to travel just as it does to home life, but with “reduce” taking on even greater importance. The less you carry, the less fuel is required to transport you and your belongings. My longtime friend Ruth (yes, the same one who had the houseplant jungle in our university flat) once challenged me to travel for two weeks across Europe with only a 25L backpack. I thought she was mad, but it turned out to be liberating in ways I hadn’t expected. Not only did I use less resources, but I spent less time managing stuff and more time actually experiencing places.
My packing strategy now revolves around versatile, durable items that can serve multiple purposes. One good-quality merino top can be worn repeatedly without washing (or smelling!), works in multiple climates, and dries quickly if you need to wash it in a hotel sink. A simple linen sarong can be a beach cover-up, picnic blanket, impromptu bag for market purchases, privacy screen, pillow case, or even a light blanket on chilly flights. My record is using the same sarong for nine different purposes during a three-week trip through Morocco. My travel companion started a tally.
Which brings me to the core travel kit that goes beyond the obvious water bottle:
A compact set of bamboo or metal cutlery that’s lasted me seven years and counting
A collapsible silicone container that serves as plate, bowl, and food storage
A small cloth produce bag that expands to hold surprising amounts of market purchases
A handkerchief (yes, really) that replaces tissues, napkins, and paper towels
Solid toiletries (shampoo bar, conditioner bar, soap, solid deodorant) that eliminate plastic packaging and never trigger airport liquid restrictions
This kit has saved me from using thousands of disposable items over the years. But the deeper waste reduction comes from choices made before you even reach for your passport.
Accommodation selection is perhaps the most impactful decision after transportation. Large chain hotels, for all their consistency, tend to be environmental disasters—from the tiny toiletries to the daily sheet changes to the individually packaged everything at the breakfast buffet. I’ve learned to look for places with genuine sustainability commitments rather than vague “eco-friendly” claims.
Some of my best experiences have come from homestays and small, locally-owned guesthouses where waste reduction is often baked in through necessity rather than marketing. The family-run pension in rural Greece where the breakfast eggs came from chickens scratching in the yard, served on ceramic plates that had clearly been in use for decades. The community tourism project in northern Thailand where food scraps were collected for composting without anyone making a fuss about it. These places tend to generate a fraction of the waste of conventional accommodations.
If you do stay in hotels, small actions can make a huge difference: declining daily housekeeping (which saves water, electricity, and chemical cleaning agents), removing the “please replace” cards from towels, returning those little shampoo bottles unused if you’ve brought your own. I once had an awkward but ultimately productive conversation with a hotel manager in Dublin about their practice of placing two plastic water bottles in each room daily, even when guests hadn’t consumed the previous day’s bottles. By the end of my stay, they were implementing a new opt-in system.
Food is another major source of travel waste, especially in destinations where tap water isn’t potable and street food comes in disposable packaging. One approach that’s served me well is carrying a water purifier—either a UV pen for quick purification or a filter bottle for longer trips. Yes, they’re an investment, but over years of travel, mine has paid for itself many times over in avoided plastic bottles.
For food, I’ve developed what I call the “market meal strategy”—finding local markets, buying simple ingredients that don’t require packaging (fruit, bread, cheese, nuts), and assembling picnic meals. It’s cheaper than restaurants, generates minimal waste, and connects you with local food culture in a way that tourist spots rarely do. Some of my most vivid travel memories involve impromptu picnics: fresh figs and sheep’s cheese on a windy Greek hillside; still-warm bread and tomatoes so ripe they barely needed slicing in a Barcelona park; dark chocolate and cherries beside a mountain stream in Slovenia.
But let’s talk about the elephant in the room: transportation. No amount of shampoo bars and reusable cutlery can offset the environmental impact of long-haul flights. I’ve wrestled with this contradiction for years, trying to balance my belief in the value of cross-cultural exchange with the cold, hard carbon math.
My approach isn’t perfect, but it’s evolved into a few guiding principles: travel less frequently but stay longer when you do. Take trains for journeys under 700km where possible. Choose destinations accessible by direct flights rather than multiple connections. And offset flights through high-quality carbon projects—not perfect, but better than nothing while we wait for genuine low-carbon aviation technology.
A few years ago, I experimented with an entirely flight-free year, traveling exclusively by train, bus, and ferry. It changed my whole perspective on journeys. What had been dead time to be endured became part of the experience itself—watching landscapes gradually shift through train windows, striking up conversations with locals on regional buses, arriving into the heart of cities rather than distant airports. Slow travel isn’t always possible with limited vacation time, but even one such journey can shift how you think about distance and connection.
The least discussed aspect of zero-waste travel is perhaps the most important: what we bring home. Not the physical souvenirs—though I have opinions about those too—but the practices and perspectives we absorb. Some of my most sustainable habits were inspired by other cultures: the Japanese emphasis on mending and repairing rather than replacing; the widespread use of market baskets in France; the refillable systems common in parts of India and Southeast Asia.
Travel, at its best, is a form of practical education. I’ll never forget watching an elderly woman in a small Turkish town efficiently using every part of a watermelon—fruit eaten fresh, white rind pickled, outer green skin fed to chickens, seeds dried for snacking. No special equipment, no waste, no fuss. She wasn’t performing sustainability as an ethical choice; she was practicing the resourcefulness that humans employed for thousands of years before disposability became a virtue.
Which brings me to a somewhat controversial view: zero-waste travel isn’t primarily about the gear you pack or even the carbon you offset. It’s about approaching journeys with a different mindset—one focused on connection rather than consumption, experiences rather than acquisitions. Some of my most satisfying travel moments have been completely free and generated zero waste: swimming in a deserted cove at sunrise in Croatia; watching fireflies in a Malaysian forest; sitting in companionable silence with an elderly Greek woman who shared her oranges with me at a bus stop despite our lack of common language.
That said, the practical stuff does matter. My zero-waste travel kit has evolved through years of trial and error (emphasis on error—like the silicone food container that wasn’t quite as leak-proof as advertised, leading to olive oil-soaked clothes in Portugal). Here are the refinements I wish someone had told me about years ago:
Invest in quality multi-purpose items rather than specialized gear. A good pocket knife with basic utensils will serve you better than a dedicated travel cutlery set.
Learn the words for “no bag, please” and “no straw, please” in the local language. Flash cards on your phone work well for this.
Research waste systems at your destination before going. Some places have robust recycling, others have none. Some have compost collection, others don’t. Adjust your approach accordingly.
Consider sustainability when selecting activities and excursions. A walking tour generates virtually no waste, while certain boat tours or ATV adventures can be environmental nightmares.
Pack a small repair kit—safety pins, needle and thread, small roll of tape, tiny tube of adhesive. Being able to fix things rather than replace them is central to waste reduction.
I’m still not perfect at this. Last year in Japan, I ended up with more single-use plastic in three weeks than I typically use in three months at home. The packaging culture there overwhelmed even my best attempts at avoidance. I found myself carefully bringing home certain waste items that I knew couldn’t be properly recycled at my destination but could be in Bristol.
My partner found this both hilarious and slightly concerning—”You’re literally carrying trash across continents, you know that, right?”—but it felt like the responsible choice at the time. In retrospect, I’m not sure the embodied carbon of transporting that waste was worth it, but it speaks to the complex calculations we make when trying to do the right thing in imperfect systems.
The pandemic changed travel dramatically, with single-use items making a fierce comeback in the name of hygiene. My first post-lockdown trip involved more disposable masks, sanitizer packets, and individually wrapped everything than I could have imagined. It felt like stepping back a decade in waste terms. But it also sparked new conversations about necessity versus habit—which precautions were truly needed for health, and which were hygiene theater that harmed the environment without providing protection?
As travel rebounds, we have an opportunity to rebuild it with sustainability at the center rather than the periphery. This means advocating for systemic change—pressing hotels to install refill stations rather than mini toiletries, asking tour operators about their waste policies, supporting businesses making genuine efforts.
But it also means changing our own expectations and behaviors. Learning to see abundance in experiences rather than possessions. Understanding that convenience often comes with hidden environmental costs. Recognizing that how we travel reflects our deeper values about our relationship with the planet and each other.
On my desk sits a small stone from a beach in Cornwall, a ticket stub from an overnight train through Spain, and a pressed flower from a mountain meadow in Romania. These zero-waste souvenirs remind me that the best travel memories aren’t things to be bought but moments to be experienced—connections that transform us without depleting the very places we love enough to journey toward.
So yes, bring your reusable water bottle. But also bring curiosity, humility, and willingness to learn from other cultures’ relationship with resources. The most valuable thing you’ll bring home won’t fit in your suitcase anyway.
