Plastic-Free Travel in NZ: What to Pack and What to Leave Behind

Travelling breaks your regular routines, which means it also breaks the sustainable habits you've built at home. The easy options at the airport or in a new town are almost always the most wasteful ones: miniature plastic bottles of shampoo, disposable razors, single-serve snacks in layers of packaging, takeaway coffee in a disposable cup.

None of that is actually unavoidable. A bit of preparation before you leave means you carry the good habits with you.

The toiletries bag

This is where most travel waste comes from. Hotels provide miniature plastic bottles of everything. They're convenient and completely unnecessary if you pack your own.

Solid shampoo and conditioner bars are the easiest swap. They're allowed as carry-on luggage because they contain no liquid, they last at least as long as a standard bottle, and they take up almost no space. We stock several options including a coconut and argan shampoo bar and a coconut conditioner bar. A bar soap travels well with a hemp soap saver bag or a stainless steel soap travel tin.

A bamboo toothbrush and toothpaste tablets cover oral care without any plastic tube. A reusable safety razor with a pack of replacement blades handles shaving without disposable razors and lasts for years.

A solid deodorant bar or natural deodorant like the Bee Fresh push-up deodorant balm rounds out the essentials. All of this fits into a small toiletries bag and weighs less than the equivalent in bottles.

Food on the road

Most travel food waste comes from packaging rather than the food itself. A reusable stainless steel drink bottle cuts out all bottled water purchases and keeps water cold and handles daily use without issue.

For snacks, packing your own in reusable silicone snack bags means you're not grabbing individually wrapped things from service stations. If you're staying somewhere with a kitchen, shopping at a supermarket with reusable produce bags and cooking a couple of meals makes a big difference to both waste and cost.

A reusable glass travel cup means your morning coffee doesn't come in a disposable cup. Many cafes in NZ will happily fill a reusable cup, and some offer a small discount for bringing your own.

On the road

The items most people forget about until they need them are small cleaning things. A Swedish dishcloth packs flat, dries quickly, and handles spills and wipes without paper towels. A bamboo dental floss in a glass jar travels easily too.

Coming home

The test of a good packing system is that it comes home with you, ready to wash and use again. Nothing disposable to throw away. The toiletries will be partially used and ready for the next trip. The bottles will be clean and refillable.

This is the point where sustainable travel stops feeling like a sacrifice and starts feeling like better packing. Less bulk in the bag, less rubbish at the destination, and nothing to feel bad about.

Browse travel-ready sustainable essentials at ecowarehouse.nz.