Traveling with kids and still being green

Traveling with kids and still being green

Kris waves for my attention from his seat across the aisle of the airplane. He mouths something to me silently: “She’s pooping!” Our almost one-year-old stands grinning in his lap. Oh no! Do I have time to change her cloth diaper? Do I even want to attempt it on a plane? In the time it takes me to decide, the seatbelt signs turn on and we begin our decent into Victoria. I guess I’ll be dealing with it after we land. Ah, travelling with kids… It can be a challenge on its own; but travelling with a kid in cloth diapers and also limiting other garbage… that requires some planning!

We recently took a week-long trip to the west coast to visit some family. While it is tempting to just use disposable items when you travel, I found a few ways to avoid them. We successfully used cloth diapers, reusable mugs, bottles, food containers and shopping bags.

Using cloth diapers on our trip worked in part because we combined them with Elimination Communication. Basically, that means we take our one year old to the bathroom regularly and give her the opportunity to relieve herself. We have done this since birth and she’s quite used to it. Except for the incident on the plane, she usually goes #2 when we take her to the bathroom – not in a diaper. It makes washing cloth diapers much simpler and less messy! (If you want to learn more, you can read about how we got started on “EC” with our first child here).

I chose 12 of my favorite cloth diapers, packed a few in a diaper bag for the plane and the rest into one of the suitcases. We stayed at a friend’s suite in Victoria, which meant easy access to a washing machine. It worked great for the week we were there. I brought our own special soap and did little loads as needed.

Diapers were my biggest concern, but I also packed a few waste-reducing reusables for the rest of the family.

  • a no-leak water bottle for our older son, and travel mugs for the adults. We used those every day of the trip, both in the airports and on our vacation. It saved a lot on buying bottled drinks.
  • dried snacks in reusable bags to avoid over priced/over packaged airport food. My favorites were: home made trail mix with dried fruit and nuts, plantain chips and homemade fruit leather.
  • roll-up nylon shopping bags which we used for everything: getting groceries, taking extra clothes and swimsuits on day trips, and tourist shopping. The brand I use and love is Envirosax which you can now get on Amazon.ca.

Even if you don’t plan ahead as much as I do, air travel is slowly getting more waste-reduction friendly. There was paper recycling in the airports, water bottle refilling stations, and Air Canada collected their plastic cups separately for recycling.

Aside from the one stinky diaper I had to deal with when we landed, we had a great trip. I would travel again with cloth diapers and our reusable gear in a heartbeat. We are looking at a trip overseas with some friends in a few months, so I might just have the chance!