This past month, May, Nicole and I took an 11-day trip with my family to Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia. Before we left we researched how to travel low waste and we made efforts throughout the trip to make eco-friendly choices. It’s definitely much harder to be low waste in countries where you aren’t fluent in the language! Despite the struggles, we did have some wins along the way.

Before we get further into our story of fails and wins, I recognize that the air travel itself was by-far the most wasteful and unsustainable part of the endeavor. The environmental impact of the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the flights and long drives is much greater than that of the few plastic cups and straws we used on the trip. That doesn’t mean, however, that the smaller efforts don’t matter as well.

Note-Worthy Fails

Despite our best efforts, we had a number of cringe inducing sustainability fails throughout our trip. All the type of stuff that we easily avoid during our daily life here in San Diego.

• Airplane Food: We had booked our flight many months ago, long before sustainability was on our minds to this extent. Our flight package included a meal. We tried to cancel it but couldn’t, and so we were served mediocre vegetarian meals that came with loads of plastic. So discouraging.
• Paper Napkins: Our first night in Venice, we went out for dinner at a canal-side bistro. The waiter was very pushy in general and quite controlling of the situation. He pushed tons of paper napkins on us despite our protests that we didn’t want them.
• Plastic Straws: We ordered cocktails one night in Piran, Slovenia and were horrified to find that each cocktail had not one, but TWO plastic straws in it. When we ordered a second round we asked for no straws and they kindly obliged. If only we had known to anticipate it on the first round! The cocktails were pretty (see above), but so wasteful.
• Wax Paper: We didn’t eat food on-the-go very often but when we did it was tough to get it without some sort of packaging.
• Plastic Packaging: We grocery shopped a few times throughout the trip and found it challenging to avoid plastic packaging. We were able to get plastic free fruits though!

Celebration-Worthy Wins

Amidst the failure, however, we also had quite a few sustainability wins.

• Snacks: We brought trail mix and snack mix in reusable silicon bags for snacks on the plane – they lasted well into the trip actually.
• Ceramic Mugs: Many mornings we used restaurants’ ceramic mugs for our tea and coffee. I was a big fan of stopping for a quick espresso as we headed out for the day!
• Reusable Bags: We used our own grocery bags during our 3 grocery shopping excursions.
• Reusable Travel Mug: During a mid-morning coffee break at Plitvice Lakes National Park, I successfully convinced a barista to put coffee in my insulated reusable mug even though he originally refused citing hygienic concerns.
• Ice Cream Cones: We ate gelato out of cones to avoid using a spoon or a paper cup.
• Toiletries: We used our own toiletries and didn’t open any soaps, shampoos, or lotions at our hotels or Airbnbs.
• Toothpaste Tabs: No plastic tube waste for us!
• Reusable Water Bottles: We got creative with refilling our reusable water bottles (e.g., airport water stations, fountains in Venice, tap water from our Airbnbs)
• Bamboo Utensils: During our layover on the way back to the United States, we purchased a meal in the airport that was plastic-free and refused a set of plastic utensils (we had our own bamboo utensils with us).

All-in-all, we felt good about the preparations that were undertook to reduce our waste throughout our travels. There wasn’t anything else that we could have brought with us to travel low waste, it was more about how we interacted and consumed on a daily basis. Rather than dwell on the errors, however, we will focus on the valuable lessons learned from this trip on how to travel low waste. Such as, refusing a meal when making your airline reservation and asking for no straw when ordering a cocktail. Really, we should just stick to wine!

Cheers! Wishing you safe, fun, low-waste travels.