Can a Family Holiday in Italy be Eco-Friendly?

Sarah Allen • August 25, 2018

I lay awake in bed, the air-conditioning whirring and my head bounding. We'd been close to missing our flight (not allowing sufficient time to get through the clogged-up, summer, motorway traffic), arriving in the dark and quickly trying to settle the family in, the stress of the day and the Italian heat finally hit me! Along with another thought going round and round in my brain, would I have to give my eco-principles a holiday too? Is it okay to try and live a low-waste life-style for 51 weeks of the year with 1 week off?

We'd already had plastic straws at McDonalds enroute. Stopping to ensure the children had something that resembled a main meal during the day (which also added to our lateness!) we swapped our usual reusable metal straws for the disposable plastic ones (in all honesty I didn't want straws coated in milkshake travelling with us from Devon). I consoled myself that, at least according to the picture on the bin, McDonalds do recycle them. Arriving at the airport, we quickly tipped out the tap water I'd been carrying to then buy bottled water once through security (no time to search for a way of refilling my bottle). On the flight I shared a can of drink with my daughter and were given a single-use plastic cup which I decided not to refuse as I really needed that cooling ice it contained. Then there is, of course the main bad guy, the flight! This was just day one and I was in a new place without my local knowledge to rely on so I didn't know what options were available to have a low-waste holiday.

However, things picked up! My headache finally went away (it took a couple of days, it's frustrating how a holiday can cause you to feel ill!) and we settled in to the rhythm of our holiday. We were staying in a Eurocamp caravan at Ca Savio Camping and the supermarket was fantastic! Having been dropped off by taxi with no car for the week we would be able to get everything we needed from the campsite supermarket by simply strolling there before lunch and dinner. Plenty of loose fruit and vegetables meant no packaging was needed. Although everyone else was popping their produce into a plastic bag I did what I do in England and simply placed it unpackaged into my shopping basket. I half-expected to be told I needed a bag once at the tills, but this didn't happen so a weeks worth of plastic free produce was available to us (tomatoes, apples, peaches, cucumbers, oranges, lettuces etc). With most of this Italian grown, the food miles were low and the food was seasonal. We also bought all our bread without plastic using the supermarket bakery in which rolls and baguettes were all sold in paper bags. Right next to this there were cakes, biscuits and croissants also sold in paper. The next counter was take-away pizza sold in cardboard and then chips, breaded mozzarella and lasagne were sold in foil trays and then placed in a paper bag. However, the best was yet to come: wine on tap! For 1 Euro a glass bottle could be bought and then filled with wine of our choice. Once enjoyed, the bottle was washed and refilled. I don't know if this is a standard Italian supermarket, having not stepped into one for around 11 years before this, but British supermarkets take note, I want to see all this here!

The campsite also had excellent recycling facilities. We could recycle plastic, cans, glass, cardboard, paper and even food waste. Some of this was collected in miniature-sized electric dustbin lorries and the accomodation was cleaned by staff zipping around on electric bikes especially adapted with all the cleaning products etc attached to the back.

The six days we spent on the campsite were car-free with us enjoying all that was on offer in terms of pools, shopping and entertainment on the campsite and the beach accessed directly from it. A very short walk away was the town with bars, restaurants and a regular market. We also had a day in Venice travelling by bus and then by boat across the lagoon.

The eco-credentials described in the last 3 paragraphs filled my cup (reusable, of course!) but a bit of pre-holiday prep also helped! Firstly, I bought no new clothes for the holiday. I was feeling smug about my lack of consumerism until it came to packing where I looked at the clothes laid out and felt deflated. Although I don't read magazines filled with fashion advice for the perfect holiday wardrobe, articles I've read in the past seemed engrained in my mind and in the disappointment on what I could see in my suitcase! It's been so hot in England this summer and I knew that really I didn't have enough clothes that would keep me cool (never mind looking cool!). This was still playing on my mind the morning we travelled so my sewing scissors came out and I cut my shorts (already adapted from a pair of jeans) shorter in an attempt to keep my cool and zipped up my bag ready to set off. The reality was: I spent some days mostly in swim wear so didn't need many clothes, I hand-washed out a couple of dresses and finally and most importantly I really didn't care what I looked like once on holiday. My normal (slightly vain but getting less so) concern with how I look vanished and I spent my time enjoying my holiday and not looking in a mirror!

Alongside my cabin bag of clothes we took a shared bag to go in the hold. In which, amongst other things, included:
- A couple of reusable shopping bags, which doubled as beach bags. We were also given a cotton shopping bag on arrival at the campsite.
- Hankies
- Cloth napkins
- Metal straws (we used these to make our drinks more appealing as we sat on our deck, we weren't given plastic straws the couple of times we went out for a meal, though I saw plenty being used elsewhere).
- Bees wax wrap
- Reusable drinks bottles for all the family (other than the airport we used these when out and about, refilling them with delicious cool water in
the fountains in Venice).
- A small cool bag to help keep the drinks cold.
- Washing-up liquid (our normal eco-brand, enough for the holiday and we brought the bottle home to be refilled).
- Paper-wrapped loo roll (I hoped I had packed enough but had to buy some more from the supermarket).
- A couple of paper bags and home-compostable packaging (made from potato starch) from a magazine (my plan was to use this for dustbin rubbish but it was ideal for the food waste along with some other paper bags we got in the campsite supermarket).
- Sun cream (we use P20 as I know it's reliable and has some eco-credentials but I need to investigate this product further).
- A bar of soap
- All my normal toiletries (bar of shampoo, bar of conditioner, coconut oil, oats for exfoliating, foundation, homemade mascara, face powder
and deodorant)
- A few food staples including sugar, mixed herbs, museli
- A few toys for the children (a couple of dolls, dominoes, paper, a pencil case, bats and ball, a water pistol and a few calpol syringes for water
fights!)
- Books (mine and the children's were borrowed from our local library)
This meant we could mostly stick to the products we were happy with and avoid buying something, half using it and having to throw it away before returning to England.

So, to answer my question: Was this holiday eco-friendly? Of course not, I don't think flying anywhere can ever be described as being a low-impact way to travel. However, I ended the holiday (without a headache, though the queues at Venice airport were quite stress-inducing!) feeling I had lowered our impact quite significantly and been able to carry on my life-style fairly well despite being in a different place. I threw our small kitchen bin bag in the rubbish containing our non-recyclables and the small amount of beach litter I picked up (it was fairly pristine and litter-free), swigged the last drop of water from the bottle I bought in Bristol and re-filled for the return journey to Venice airport and placed it in the recycling bin outside departures. Travel is so important to feed my soul and I really haven't done enough of it to satisfy my itchy feet since having kids. My children have benefitted and learnt so much from our brief stay in Italy and I am (fairly) comfortable with the environmental impact of our holiday.

Do you have any eco-friendly travel tips? I'd love to know in the comments.

Although I have mentioned where we stayed this is NOT a sponsored post I just share what I feel is worthwhile. However, if you enjoyed reading this and want to shout me a coffee (maybe not an italian one now we're home!) I'd love you to become a Rhubarb and Runner Beans Patron.

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