When I was 17, my mother took me on my first international trip to France, further cementing a deep, lifetime love for culture and travel. Last month, I had the joy of taking my mother to Spain for ten days, as a thank you, but also to celebrate everything that has transpired over the years.
At 17, in France, plastics were the furtherest thing from my mind, but now, years later, I returned to Europe with new eyes and a new M.O: what would it be like to avoid plastics completely and produce as little trash as possible while traveling in Europe?
Overall, the answer was: it's fairly easy.
I came equipped with a few of the proper tools and kept my mind trained to be on the lookout for the usual suspects. My mother and I both brought a Klean Kanteen coffee mug, bamboo cutlery (she has a whole fancy pants set, I just came with my bamboo fork), a few mason jars with lids (I kept my metal tiffin at home because it was too bulky to cart around), I brought my trusty Klean Kanteen water bottle (mother's coffee mug doubled as her water bottle), a cloth bag to put snacks in, and my mother brought a Klean Kanteen metal cup, which mostly came in handy on the flight home when the most amazing stewardess on American Airlines poured white wine into it.
The thing that really stuck out to me was that at 99.9% of the places we ate, there were only disposable napkins - everything else was for-here ware. This really punctuated the fact that in the United States, disposables have become the norm. At most places in the States, I have to ask for for-here ware and sometimes, especially at places like cafes, I go without if I forgot to bring a mug because they ONLY carry disposables.
While in Spain, they are easy to avoid as espresso is poured into ceramic cups, food is placed on ceramic plates eaten with metal cutlery, and water and wine are poured into glass. Also, most times, even the water comes in glass bottles (We usually asked for tap to save money/waste but my Spanish could be stronger, so sometimes we had to purchase it. Once, the water came in a plastic bottle and for the first time in five years I drank water from a plastic bottle. I felt really guilty and made more of an effort to look around to make sure the water came in glass bottles before requesting water).
Composting wasn't much of an option, so we made sure to only order what we would eat. A few times I forgot to say, "sin pan," and we wasted some slices bread we didn't want. The portions are smaller in Spain, too, so it makes it a lot easier to not waste food. The food also seemed more whole, simpler, and fresher. The people were definitely thinner in Spain - a testament to their food, walking habits, society, and culture.
Good food makes being healthier and zero waste easier, like this breakfast food found on a buffet at LLOP, an organic restaurant in Barcelona:
There were some random places I saw bins for composting, like this trash can at the train station in Seville:
We went as tourists, so actually living Zero Waste in Spain is probably a lot easier than just while you're traveling. We did see open markets for bulk buying, like the 800-year old Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria in Barcelona, where you can get just about anything in bulk!
Or random little family-owned sustainable, organic shops, like the one we happened upon in Albaycin, the old Moorish neighborhood in Granada:
Spain also values its heritage, which leads to preserving its buildings and infrastructure. This saves a lot of waste and energy! It always saddens me how common it is in Los Angeles to tear down a beautiful, old building to build a new one instead of putting the effort into preserving what we already have. Organizations, like the Los Angeles Conservancy, have actually formed out of the need to fight this nasty habit!
The only trouble I had was finding easily accessible water fountains. I drink a lot of water and in most public places in the United States, there are plenty of places to refill your reusable water bottle. I filled up my water bottle in the mornings at our hotel (usually at the bathroom sink. I read that the water in Spain is filtered and safe, and so far it doesn't seem to have made me sick) and once in a while I found a water fountain in the city parks. Other than that, I was usually out of luck until we went to a restaurant.
The other issue was that most places only offer paper napkins. I think out of all of the disposables, paper napkins are the smallest offenders. They will breakdown in two months, but most likely won't be composted so they might produce some of the emissions that contribute to global warming. Also, I thought about the materials and energy it took to make the napkins that were then trashed- very wasteful! A better option would be to bring a cloth napkin or handkerchief that can be easily hand washed at night in the hotel room.
Traveling always makes me realize how little one needs in life to survive. We both only packed carry-on sized bags but even with that, I found I packed too much! I came back with fresh eyes and wanting to go through my closet to pare down even further the amount of clothes in my wardrobe.
I would say that my suspicions were true - life in Spain is more sustainable than in a lot of other places. My lack of purchasing physical objects over the years made this vacation possible and I'm truly appreciative that I was able to go. Experiences truly are the best gift in my opinion, like eating rose-shaped sorbet ice cream cones while walking through the labyrinth-like streets of Seville. Don't worry - none of the sorbet in this picture went to waste!