Tip 3 – Take Your Own Snacks

Travelling plastic free in Iran…

Every bus we traveled on in Iran dished out snacks. The better the bus the more snacks you are given. Biscuits cakes water and juice, all of it is offed, all of it is plastic wrapped. A single journey will generate bag loads of non biodegradable trash and so we don’t accept it. Instead we bring our own.

Despite Persia’s love affair with packaging there are still hundreds of places that sell loose.

You can nuts dried fruit and all manner of things by weight from the bazaar.

If you are squeamish about eating unwrapped dried apricots from the dusty bazaar, the bakeries are extremely clean and hygienic. They sell bread, biscuits and cakes loose and by weight. Make mine a kilo of cakes.

Finally there is always peelable fruit.

Fantastic – but still not out of the woods. While some of these places might have paper bags most use plastic so you will need to take your own. We travel with bio bags and reusable cotton produce bags.

For a drink its water in our reusable, refillable bottle treated with a Steripen. So when everyone else is creating rubbish with a life span of forever, we are not.

Smug? You know it!

For more posts on plastic in Iran read up here

For loose food in the UK try the loose foods list

Inspired to give up plastic? Check these plastic free products sourced as part of our plastic boycott and listed here the >>>A-Z plastic free index

Water Refills Philippines

When travelling in far-flung places we will not buy water in plastic bottles. NO its just wrong. Instead we sterilize our own using a Steripen but when a bottle refill service is offered we will use that instead as we want to support and encourage such damn fine ventures.

We are plotting refill points up here on a google map called water refills

Meanwhile back in

Cebu

Cebu City  to Moalboal

Theres no need to buy bottled water  in Cebu as far as I can tell. Everywhere you look there are large refillable water bottles, encased in wooden boxes, where you can refill your  bottle for pesos. They look homemade  to me – the boxes not the bottles I mean.  Photos to follow.

Do join in -add details of your favourite water refill point in the comments box  – xxx

For other water refill points the world over check our

big list

Want to find more travel related plastic free tips?  Try backpacking plastic- free and  the travel category

Stay at home type? Check out these plastic free products sourced as part of our ongoing boycott listed in the >>>A-Z<<< plastic free index

Related articles

• Plastic Water Bottles Outlawed In Concord Massachusetts (redorbit.com)

Andaman Islands, India

Thought I might do a little bit of stocktaking and put together an itinary of the plastic pollution pictures featured on the Planet trash Facebook page. Today it is the turn of the Andman Islands, India

They really are the most wonderful islands surrounded by coral reefs of such beauty words fail me….AND YET THEY ARE COVERED IN PLASTIC TRASH.

Sure much of it is created on the island. With no proper way to deal with it it is dumped or dropped wherever. The rest is washed up by the sea. You can see the rest of the photos in this series here

 Andamans – trouble in paradise

And here are some photos of the island clean up day here – hundreds of sacks of plastic trash, a whole navy boat full in fact, were removed.

Find more here – Beach Clean Up, Andamans.

Want to see more worldwide sites trashed by plastic – check out the  Facebook Photo Index….. or browse through the  Flickr  Plastic Is Rubbish photo pool.

Inspired to give up plastic? Check these plastic free products sourced as part of our plastic boycott and listed here the >>>A-Z plastic free index

Want to travel plastic free – check out the plastic free backpack.

Tip 2 – modify breakfast

Travelling plastic free in Iran…

I love Iranian breakfasts – fresh bread, eggs, goats or sheep cheese, creamy butter, village jam and honey with black tea. Nice.

Sadly, in hotels at least, they have gone for per-packed portion controlled servings in plastic with a boiled egg. The whole lot is cling-filmed to the plate for the purposes of hygiene apparently. I know…I know…

Here is a typical Iranian breakfast as served in a reasonable hotel.

For the purpose of consumer research I tried one. The butter was weird and slick, the cheese was like dairy lee, the honey was just syrup. water and the jam a bright red blob of jelly that tasted of no fruit at all. Grim, worse than tasteless and resulting in a plateful of everlasting trash.

What to do for breakfast instead?

Ask to have the bread and egg separate and unattached to the plate.Explain that clingfilm and plastic are carcinogens. Ask for some cucumber or fruit instead of poison wrapped spreads. You are missing nothing by refusing this rubbish and helping to endorse the use of local products which are far superior

For more posts on plastic in Iran read up here

Find lots more pictures of Iranian plastic pollution here at
Planet Trash and Flickr  Plastic Is Rubbish

Inspired to give up plastic? Check these plastic free products sourced as part of our plastic boycott and listed here the >>>A-Z plastic free index

Want to travel plastic free – check out the plastic free backpack

Want to eat plastic free -try the cookbook

Find out why we boycott plastic – here

 

 

Tip 1 – take a towel

Travelling plastic free in Iran…

We don’t usually stay in the kind of hotels that provide luxurious extras like towels. Our hotels are basic. The kind where you see something brown on your pillow case you can be sure its not a chocolate. That means we have to bring our own towels .

As backpackers we try to keep our bags small so rather than carry towels we use multipurpose wraps (sarongs). These double (triple?) as towels, beachwear and dressing gowns. While they make excellent dressing gowns they lack the absorbency of proper fleecy bath sheets. Basically you use them to wipe off the excess water but not much more. This is fine in warmer climates where the hot air can finish the job but in colder places they tend to leave you clammy in your clefts and moist between your toes. Not how you want to be.

Another consideration is drying them after use. Again not a problem when its warm, infinitely harder when its cold. Traveling with wet towels is unpleasant. After a couple of days everything in your pack smells horribly of damp and there is mildew on your knickers. Our immediate solution to cold weather drying problems is not to shower.

Being British, and Northern, I can go for days on one quick wipe round with a flannel. Village Boy has higher standards and soon starts winging. Eventually we have to book a couple of days in a reasonably nice hotel that supplies hot water, towels and ideally a laundry service.

The North of Iran has been wet and cold so shivering and whiffy we have been searching out decent places to clean up. For reasons I cannot begin to imagine some hotels in Iran have started heat sealing their towels in plastic bags. Yes plastic wrapped towels. We asked for unwrapped towels but apparently they return from the laundry like that.

We opened them and used the towels but it quite spoilt our shower.

We have taken the plastic bags with us to reuse.

Want to find more travel related plastic free tips? Check out the plastic- free backpack 

 Stay at home type? Find plastic-free products with the >>>A-Z<<< plastic free index

Back on Track – Bulgaria & Turkey

Portrait of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, first president of the Republic of Turkey. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After Village Boy’s family trouble, and the cutting short of our visit to the long nosed monkeys, we are now back on the road and traveling almost overland to Iran.

For a variety of boring reasons we had to kick start our trip with an Easy Jet flight to Bulgaria.

We spent a couple of nights in Sophia then got a series of buses to Ankara.

Why all the buses? Yes I know, they are the device of the Devil, but Turkey is updating its rail system to take new fast trains. Consequently, lots of lines are closed – including the one from the Bulgarian border to Istanbul and from Istanbul to Ankara.

However we managed to get an overnight train to Erzurum. Even more pleased to find we had inadvertently booked first class. From there it was back on the bus but just a hop across to Georgia.

The PLASTIC POLLUTION in Bulgaria and Turkey is a real problem, so here are my plastic travel tips should you choose to overland it to Georgia.

The tap water is safe to drink in Bulgaria and Turkey but you can double check using this fantastic website.

Even so, even the cheapest Turkish hotels tend to have water machines to refill your reusable bottle with.

The more expensive the bus you take, the more plastic wrapped crap they give you – water, biscuits, instant coffee etc. Get a cheaper bus and take your own snacks.

Turkish Train Travel

We booked a berth on the Doğu Express which leaves Ankara at 18:53 arriving Erzurum 16:53 and Kars 22:15 next day. The man from seat 61 describes it as “a very scenic journey right across Turkey, highly recommended”. I cam confirm that . Nicer still was that the food in the buffet, apart from the bread rolls that came individually wrapped in plastic bags, was all plastic free, served on china plates with real knives and forks. And, by train standards, was pretty good and reasonably priced – apart from the beer which was outrageous.

You can find lots more plastic free places here  and check out out plastic free backpack here.

Stay at home type? Check out all the  plastic-free, compostable  products I have sourced with the >>>A-Z<<< plastic free index

You can find out more about our travels over at Mean Green Packers

What water bottle

I do love our water bottles so much I thought I would write a post on them. Here they are.

Please before you scoff, yes we did have proper traveller canteens but we lost them. And the replacements we bought, and the ones after that. Which is bad news as it is very hard to find a good water bottle in SEAsia. So far we have only been able to buy children’s  bottles, the kind that go into lunch boxes, from their equivalent of our “What A Pile Of Crap” shops. That is why I have a pink plastic Barbie bottle which leaks while Village Boy carries a power rangers metal bottle which sheds glittering flakes of metalic, and no doubt poisonous, paint on everything…but is at least beverage tight.

However, despite the above  failings, it is the perfect combination of bottle types. Allow me to expand.

As you know we sterilise our own water using a Steripen. The steripen needs to be submerged in water so the neck of the bottle needs to be wide enough to allow this – Barbie bottle is just right for the job.

When buying juice from stalls instead of getting juice  in a plastic cups We use Barbie bottle.

It is also good for making tea in though probably leaks BPA like a beeitch.

Barbie bottle is so good you might think why bother with transformers glitter bottle. Well the wider the neck the harder it is to drink from on bouncing buses. Far less likely to slobber with transformers.

Also the smaller the screw fitting, the less chances there are of leakage.

Transformers doubles as a hot water bottle on freezing farms.

Transformers is not made from plastic.

Both bottles take half a litre which is perfect for the Steripen which will do 1 or 1/2 a litre at a time.

half a litre of water each is as much as we need to carry the beauty of the Steripen  is that we can always sterilise more when needed.

These bottles fit nicely into bags and don’t weigh too much.

However when Barbie bottle gets left behind this is the bottle I really want

Kanteen Reflect Steel Bottle: No Paint or Plastic, Bamboo, Laser Etched.

If you love your water bottle please do share why.

Find places to fill your water bottle here

Want to find more travel related plastic free tips? Check out the travel category

Stay at home type? Check out my range of Uk based plastic free products with the >>>A-Z<<< plastic free index

but can I drink the water…….

Water tap (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When planning an overseas trip you might want to check if the tap water is actually safe to drink. To find out, visit this super cool website” can I drink the water”. Just pick the country you want and read the result.

If yes, hooray – all you need to take is your refillable bottle.

If no consider buying a Steripen to sterilize you own water. Or check out our Google water refills map to find places where you can refill your reusable bottle with clean water. Or read about them here.

Want to find more travel related plastic free tips? Check out the plastic free backpack 

Stay at home type? Check out my range of U.K. based plastic free products with the >>>A-Z<<< plastic free index

How to backpack (or holiday), plastic free

Crossing land borders in South East Asia has been unusually stressful this trip thanks to the big bag of  white powder I am carrying in my rucksack. No we are not funding our trip by an ill advised foray into drug smuggling but trying to travel plastic free. Plastic free means no plastic toothpaste tubes so we have brought a sack of home-made tooth powder with us. While carrying tightly wrapped  packs of dentifrice may be innocent, it sure doesn’t look it and I dread the day I have to explain to some grim-faced custom official. The response I fear  involves rubber gloves.

So why do it? Well we are visiting wild and remote places, the kind of places you have to walk to. Places with no garbage collection service and your rubbish goes onto the village dump just out-of-town. A system that has been in place forever and that used to work. In the old days of course most trash was biodegradable, animals would eat it or it would compost down, it was safe to burn and the ashes could be used as fertilizer. The system was not perfect, but people have lived like this for centuries and maintained  sustainable landscapes. The introduction of plastic rubbish has changed everything.

Plastic rubbish remains intact for hundreds of years. It cannot be eaten, does not dissolve and it is difficult to burn. When it does eventually break up or degrade, it only breaks down into smaller pieces of plastic. Disposing of plastic is a big and expensive job. It has to be collected up and buried in landfill or incinerated. Some plastics can be recycled but only a small percentage are. Whatever your method of plastic disposal, it requires amongst other things a decent infrastructure, some roads, machinery, power and vehicles. You don’t get all that the places we go.

So  now the ditches alongside the rice paddies are choked with plastic crisp bags, the beaches littered with plastic water bottles and  plastic bags cover huge swathes of land. Evil smelling bonfires of smoldering plastic trash are now as much a part of the backpacker experience as tinkling temple bells. These filthy fires add to air pollution and global warming and worse – certain types of plastic, when burnt,  release dioxin, a known human carcinogen and one the most potent.

We don’t want to leave a pile of everlasting trash in the places we visit so we boycott plastic disposables. Here’s how:

Our plastic free backpack list

We use a Steripen  to purify our own water  and so cut out those pesky plastic bottles. This fantastic bit of kit works by UV light, weighs next to nothing and is tiny and purifies water in 90 seconds. if you bought only one thing….

Of course then you need to take water bottles

Because so much street food comes in disposables we take

tin cups

reusable tin tiffin tin No 1   and tiffin tin No.2

chop sticks. And folding cutlery.

We say no to plastic straws in drinks, which leads to some  interesting mimes. Next time we will take our own straws

Our wash bag looks like this….

We use hydrogen peroxide  for  treating wounds and mouthwash

And the heroin tooth powder  for cleaning our teeth

I carry a years supply of sun block – home-made and plastic free. Same for  Self Tan

I make my own creams  and lotions WHILE travelling -check out  Making cream in Bangkok

We use a  solid shampoo cuts down on more bottles.  Lush (www.lush.com ) do some  but we use bar soap – it works fine

We shop at local markets and bakeries for unpacked tasty plastic free snacks and we  take our own bags to put them in including a reusable carrier bag.

We use re-chargeable batteries for all the techie stuff.

Buy from…

Follow the links to see where we got our stuff ( all over the place), or check out the Amazon -  shopping list below for similar products available in the UK.

Find out about plastic, why we boycott it and who we are here

Stay at home type? Check out these plastic free products sourced as part of our plastic boycott and listed in the awesome

A-Z plastic free index

a years supply of sun block

 I have absolutely no melamine and my skin burns even in cloudy conditions. Sure I cover up but I still have  to factor up on a regular basis.

I have been making my own sun block for years now and it does work (details below), but when setting off on our plastic free travels I had to ask myself:

Could I  really carry a years supply of home made sun tan lotion out there with me?

If so I would I carry it?

Last time I went away I took my home-made lotions in metal pots. While they are fine in the handbag they are not so good for hard core backpacking. My pack gets flung on and off jolty old buses and the metal bottles crumpled and creased under the strain. Then the lids could not be removed or started to leak.

Obviously I am not going to use glass bottles.

This is one of those times when plastic bottles are the best option so why not just buy the lotion out there ready made and packed in plastic bottles. Its not even as if those bottles would be going to landfill or end up as litter. In most of the countries we visit plastic bottles represent cash and are collected by  litter pickers.

Plenty of justifications for buying ready-made, plastic –packed lotion and yet I was not keen on that idea. Part of it is just stubbornness. I want to see how far I can go with this. Another reason is I hate  the crap they put in those creams – all those nasty chemicals and irritating perfumes.

So here’s my solution.

Back home I made some uber strong sun block cream. It’s  as thick as axel grease with a factor of about 100. I adapted an Aromantic recipe, reduced the water and upped the sun block ingredients,details below. It was all very ad hoc so there is no recipe.

Now, while travelling,  I thin down the axel grease with  homemade lotion as needed. I refill the  reusable plastic bottles I took from home. I can make a range of factors depending on how much lotion I add. So far it is working.

The logical amongst you will be looking puzzled. Surely  the problem remains? Rather then carrying a years supply of sunblock I now have to carry a years supply of lotion to thin the sunblock down with??

No because I make the lotion as I go along using the Plastic Is Rubbish backpackers home made lotion kit.

I think you will be proud of me!

Here’s how you make sun tan lotion

And here is  The Plastic Is Rubbish Backpackers home made lotion kit

Other cream related posts can be found HERE. If like me you don’t tan, you might be especially interested in Home madehfake tan

There are lots more plastic free beauty products here.

Want to find more travel related plastic free tips? Check out the travel category

Stay at home type? Check out this list of plastic free products -the >>>A-Z<<<  index

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• Great pot (plasticisrubbish.wordpress.com)
• Making cream in Bangkok (plasticisrubbish.wordpress.com)