How I Minimize Use of Plastic While Traveling

What would you do to reduce using plastic when everything around you is made from plastic? How would you convince yourself not to buy or take plastic from anyone when every other person readily offers it? While buying milk and groceries from the neighborhood Mom-and-Pop shops, how do I refuse to take the plastic bag every time? Won’t that mean I have to carry everything in my hands? Won’t I feel embarrassed when people see me and point out my inanity?

When I thought of quit using plastic from my existence, all these thoughts used to come across my mind. However, as I progressed through my journey, I found myself getting successful day by day. It is easier to be eco-friendly when you are in your city or home than doing the same while traveling. I had heard stories of the dead bodies of millions of fish coming to the shores of the oceans because humans have polluted the waters.

At once, I thought that how does it matter if plastic in the oceans kills every creature? I was being selfish, I must admit. I researched further about it and talked to people in Mumbai and Bali. The aware, even though uneducated, people of these places had a common perspective that every creature on this earth is co-dependent on each other in one form or the other. People eat seafood and they are at the risk of contaminated animals. The vegetarian folks are at equal risk because they consume fish oils, which might be extracted from infected fish. Plastic does not disintegrate for hundreds of years, which is what we know. A meagre pet bottle of soft drinks needs 450 years to break down. Imagine the kind of mess we are leaving for the future generations. Anyway, without digressing from the topic, let me share how I minimize using plastic while traveling.

Not using plastic containers

As I said, it is easy to follow your principles when you are at home. My real test begins when I leave home to travel to my dream destinations. Last month, I had to car rental in Bangalore without driver for my road trip to Coorg. It broke my heart to see the amount of filth people had spread throughout the way. Since the day I have started loving wood and glass containers, I have never found the dearth of them anywhere I travel. Even for keeping oils and face wash, I prefer using glass containers rather than plastic tubes. Next, when I have to store my food in the car, I don’t touch plastic tiffin boxes. I have a variety of steel containers at home, which I blissfully carry in my bags. Some of them are so well made that they are equally air-tight as plastic boxes.

Not taking a plastic bag

Whenever I have to buy something, I refuse to take plastic bags. Indian shopkeepers readily give away a plastic bag to everyone who buys even a needle from them. However, I carry a durable and reusable plastic basket for buying things from the market and keep putting things in it until it is stuffed. Next, if I don’t have another basket, I use my backpack, which is always there with me while traveling. I don’t need to say more because I never buy more than I can carry.

In the last five years of going plastic free, I have realized that everything is possible if one is determined. All the excuses that I used to give myself were futile because I have actually gone plastic free in this day and age of enormous plastic use.