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As you may (or not) know, we just came back from two wonderful weeks in Scotland. We rented a campervan and drove through the Highlands just like if we would be a part of Outlander.
My goal was to keep our waste to a minimum, in order to compensate that we were driving a diesel van.
But we failed. BIG TIME.
We don’t own a car, we only drive when we are on holidays and, since the car rental companies are not offering electric cars yet, we have to stick to the regular stinky ones. Oh well. Because of that, I wanted to avoid producing any more pollution and waste so I had a plan:
I would try to avoid all the plastic we come across.
Said me, prior to our trip.
I packed my travel mug, my cloth bag, and my metal lunch box and drinking bottle(I even made my own wet wipes!) and off we went. Little did Naïve-me know that things just don’t work like that.
We were missing a very important part of the process: Planning. I had decided that, since we were celebrating Martin’s birthday, he would do all the deciding: where to go, where to eat, where to park. Very convenient also for me, because I hate decision making (not a good quality for an entrepreneur I guess…). I let everything on his will and sat and enjoyed the view.
Wrong.
Our first encounter with a non Zero Waste option was shopping food for the trip. We would have a small gas kitchen in the van, so we had to buy supplies. We went to Lidl, very hungry for food and adventure, to buy our supplies.
Wrong again.
Had I been more organized, I could have bought our rice and pasta in the package free shop we passed by while walking through Edinburg. But I didn’t have my cloth bag with me.
Another thing I was counting on doing was to use Too Good to Go to source our food (maybe you’ve seen it in my Insta Stories). Too Good to Go is an app where you can get food that restaurants would otherwise would have to throw away for a reduced price. I’ve used it here in Munich and works fantastic, so I thought it would be a good idea to save some sandwiches or even fish and chips from the trash.
Guess what? I was wrong.
There is a lot of choices when you are in cities like Edinburgh or Inverness, but as soon as you drive couple of hours, you find yourself in the middle of nowhere. Which we loved, but i automatically eliminated my great food sourcing idea.
We ended up producing more trash than we normally would at home, since we ended up buying more canned and packaged food. I have to admit, I felt a bit disappointed at us, at the fact that we (or I) have become so relaxed at avoiding waste. But this also taught me a great deal on how to plan our adventures for the next time, and we will for sure make it better next time.
And there was not all bad in this trip. We had an amazing time in this beautiful country, the people are incredibly nice and we saw seals while walking along the coast. Obviously the highlight of our trip. Did I mention that Scotland is incredibly BEAUTIFUL? Seriously, gorgeous.
Here are some pictures in case you don’t believe me:
Love,
Pato
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