Naturally Goode

Tag: caravan

  • How to be a more eco friendly traveller this holiday season.

    How to be a more eco friendly traveller this holiday season.

    We are now into the Australian summer and speeding towards peak holiday season at an alarming rate. I thought it good timing to provide some tips about how to keep your traveling as eco friendly as possible with as little waste as possible.  Whether you’re flying to the farthest corners of the earth or roaming the outback in a caravan, there are small things you can do to make sure you tread lightly on this great earth of ours.

    Flying High

    If you are flying:

    • purchase carbon offsets
    • make your trip for as long as possible and fly as little as possible to reduce the carbon footprint.
    • Do your research and make sure areas you are visiting have fresh water available. If not, take a drink bottle with a built-in filter.
    • If you have to buy water, buy in the largest size possible and use that to refil your day to day drink bottle.
    • If you are staying in accommodation, look for venues that are eco friendly and employ sustainable practices.

    Going Bush

    If you are camping:

    • Take food and water with you and pre-prepare travel meals and snacks to reduce the need to purchase take away.
    • If you have to eat out, eat in the restaurant to reduce packaging waste.
    • Take reusable containers to reduce your need for single use wrappers. I have a set of tupperware just for the caravan so we can pack sandwiches and snacks for any day trips we take during our holidays.
    • Take a portable loo and empty it at proper dump points in the nearest town. Don’t leave your ablutions and TP all over the bush, buried or not.
    • Make sure your waste water is let out far enough away from the nearest body of water.  Check local regulations to see how far that needs to be.
    • Use Tri Nature products so your waste water won’t cause harm to the environment or wildlife
    • Don’t wash (clothes or yourself) in waterways, dams, rivers, oceans, etc.  Using soap and personal care products in waterways causes pollution and harm to aquatic life, not to mention sending your bodily fluids to everyone downstream.  Get in and get wet, then get out and take a bucket of water the appropriate distance away to soap up and rinse off.
    • Take all your rubbish with you and dispose of properly.  Have everyone do an emu parade at the end of packing up to make sure you don’t leave anything behind.  You each get allocated a certain area of your camp site and you walk that area and pick up any pieces of rubbish within.  Don’t forget tent pegs, ropes and bits of fishing gear!

    No matter where you are:

    • If you are taking your washing home with you, take a travel size enhance pre-wash spray so you can get onto stains asap. Enhance won’t wreck your clothes and it will make sure the stains don’t set before you have time to wash.
    • Pack some cloth bags.  I have about 5 that roll up into almost nothing and they live in my handbag.  They are so handy for so many things, like when you go to the shop for one thing and end up buying about 10.
    • Snack on fresh fruit wherever possible so there’s no packaging waste.
    • If you need to do your own washing while you’re travelling, take a small container of laundry powder, so you know you can be more eco-friendly than a hotel laundry or in a laundromat.
    • Take a travel size Sphagnum Moss Disinfectant with you for emergencies like cleaning a public loo seat before using it, or spraying stinky teenage boy feet and shoes when they take their shoes off in the car on long road trips.
    • Take your refillable drink bottle with you. There are some excellent squishy ones around that fold/roll up nicely when empty so they don’t take up too much space in your luggage.  Most airlines don’t count drink bottles or coffee mugs in the weight of your carry on, if you are holding them.
    • Take your coffee travel mugs with you or order in and sit down for your coffee.  Research ahead and find cafes that let you bring your own mug (although most do these days).
    • Take a travel cutlery set everywhere, including metal straws, so you don’t need to use any single use sets.
    • Make a list of any ideas you have for next time.  Remember, you don’t have to get it right and be perfect with zero waste.  This is just about making better choices and getting better each time.  And if you have ideas I haven’t listed, please get in touch and let me know so I can add them to this post for all to share.
    • Have fun!!

  • How my partner nearly poisoned us all

    Over the last school holidays, we took the caravan away for a week of camping.  We were headed to a caravan park for a couple of days and so we had a site with power and water access.  As usual, we were frantically packing in between work and sleep and all our other obligations.  At the last minute on the day of departure, we realised we hadn’t put in a hose.  So may partner ran around the back of the house and grabbed one from the garden and threw it in.

    Having a camp site with power and water is a real luxury, especially for me.  It means I don’t have to cart buckets of water around and boil the kettle just to wash the dishes.  It also means we can use the tap on the caravan sink that you turn on and off like a normal tap, as opposed to the pump tap which requires physical effort.

    I noticed that when I filled up my 1L drink bottle, the water had a lot of bubbles in it.  I put it down to air in the lines and assumed they would go away and the water would clear up, as I have seen before.  I noticed the same bubbly consistency when I filled up the kettle to boil.

    I drank from my water bottle and it tasted ok.  Not great, but ok.  Not great is sometimes to be expected at regional caravan parks because the water can come from local sources and may be treated differently to home.  I thought no more about it.

    Then I had a cup of tea which had a distinctly soapy taste to it.  How odd.  I decided that there must have been some muck in the lines and I would make another cup with a fresh pot of water and see how that tasted.  The second cup was a soapy, if not more, than the first.  I mentioned it to my partner and he said his coffee also tasted soapy.  I went and got water directly from the tap outside the van for the next cup of coffee to test out whether it was just the taste of the local water or something more suspicious.

    That cup of tea tasted just fine.  I reported this to my partner.  Then we hopped in the car and went for a drive to do some exploring of the local area and thought no more of it for a while.

    About two hours later my partner suddenly gave a yell.  “I know why the water tastes soapy!” he shouted triumphantly.  Turns out that in his rush to grab a hose, he grabbed the hose that comes out the window of the laundry onto the grass.  The hose that all our dirty laundry water flows through….Awesome….

    So here we were drinking residue of dirty laundry water, including laundry detergent and fabric softener.  In a household using supermarket products full of toxins, this could have made us very, very sick and possibly even had us end up in hospital.  BUT we use Tri Nature, so that wasn’t an issue in our house.  Just another “thank goodness it’s Tri Nature” moment.  And a note to self to buy a hose that is just for the caravan…

  • Happy Camping

    How I stay Green when travelling

    Tonight I am typing to you from my caravan currently sitting along side the Murray River in a town called Walwa in rural Vic.  We are camped here ready and raring to go for the Bush Market in Corryong tomorrow and Saturday as part of the Man From Snowy River Bush Festival.

    It’s a few days past the Easter long weekend and I realise I really should have written this post at the start of last month, or even 2 weeks ago.  It would have been much more helpful BEFORE the Easter long weekend, when so many of us head bush.  But I was busy getting ready for my own Easter road trip, so now is the time I have to write it.  Sorry about that…

    I digress.  The purpose of this blog is to tell you how I keep things Green in the bush and which products I have in my caravan to help me do that.

    First of all, if we are heading somewhere we have to take our own water, the tank in the caravan isn’t always big enough.  I have about 4 of the Coles 10L water containers.  You can unscrew the lid and refill them and the lid has a tap on it for easy access.  I fill these up from the tap and bring them along.  I always have my reusable water bottles and I fill these out of the 10L bottles.  Easy peasy and no single use plastic required.

    I always carry a roll of WGAC TP (Who Gives A Crap Toilet Paper) and Paper Towel in the cupboard for emergencies.  I am comfy in the knowledge that, worst case scenario, it all breaks down quickly and contains no bleaches or eco contaminants.  Plus profits go to build toilets in 3rd world countries so #winning!

    I have an entire set of collapsible tupperware containers and bowls I keep in the cupboard for leftovers.  I don’t know about you but I always over cater, no matter how carefully I plan.  Maybe because the number of kids travelling with us can change anytime up until 3 minutes before we leave and I am getting really good at the fishes and loaves trick.

    I can’t stand wasting food (and therefore money).  Since feeding human food to wildlife can make them very sick, and also since most places beg you not to do it and make unbearable pests of some animals, into the containers it goes and into the fridge/esky.  Leftovers make great lunches and a nice variation on sandwiches or wraps in our camp.

    Another handy Tupperware item I love to keep in my van is the TupperChef (I think the smaller version may be called the TurboChef?  I’m not great with the names).  Anyway, this thing is like a food processor but it uses a pull cord instead of electricity so it’s people powered and you get a free workout at the same time (which is worth at least one glass of wine I reckon).  No need for packet food.  This gadget is absolutely perfect for quickly and easily chopping onions and garlic but also for mincing veggies for “hidden veg” dishes.  And it takes nary more than a rinse to clean it up.  It’s a ripper (get it?  Ripper…Rip cord….sorry…it’s late).

    And speaking of cleaning up, of course I have some Tri Nature products in residence.  Chamomile Dishwashing Liquid is a given for the dishes.  It doesn’t dry my hands but it does a terrific job on the dishes in hot or cold water and it won’t hurt the earth when it runs out the drainpipe of the caravan onto the grass below.

    A spray bottle of Supre Multipurpose Cleaner is always on hand in the caravan as well.  This is good for cleaning the stove and fridge but also getting scuff marks and general mess of walls and cupboards.  It can also be great for getting bug guts off the caravan outside and off the car headlights and windscreen at a pinch.

    Next is my spray bottle of Enhance Pre Wash Stain Remover Spray.  Most pre wash sprays contain up to 80% kerosene.  This is why you can’t leave them on the clothes for too long before they start to eat the fabric and stain your clothes beyond repair.  Not so with enhance.  No petrochemicals at all or anything else toxic or harmful.  So if we’re away for 4 or 5 days, or even 2 weeks, and I don’t want to do any laundry on my holiday, Enhance saves me time when we get home.

    I spray any stains on the clothes before they get thrown into the washing bag.  Stains that I know can be tough if not dealt with upfront (like hot chocolate or pasta sauce), I rub the Enhance in roughly.  90 to 95% of stains either disappear before my very eyes or they are gone before we get home and I have to actually launder the clothes.  This little trick has saved me mountains of time and even bigger mountains of sanity.  It doesn’t have to be just when camping either.  I absolutely use this trick at home as well.

    Next up is the air freshener.  This is vital when travelling with young kids, teenagers or men.  At the moment I have the Baby Air Freshener going.  I like the smaller bottle (250ml size) and it doubles as a bit of a disinfectant because it has tea tree and lavender oils in it.  You could also use Sphagnum Moss or Sanazone (original or Lemon Myrtle) as perfectly good substitutes.

    I use this to get rid of BO/fart/general-smelly-children smells but it’s also handy if you have a musty old caravan or tent that needs de-odorising.  I use the spray on fabrics as well as in the air.  And if you are using shared toilets, this is an essential item for cleaning the seat before you have to use it.  If you have a loo in your caravan, air freshener is always going to be in demand.

    If you do have a caravan with a toilet, you can also use Sphagnum Moss disinfectant concentrate in the bowl instead of whatever they tell you to buy to break down the contents.  It’s the travelling and slooshing around that does all the breaking down, you just need a good disinfectant to help it along and cover up the stench.  At least with Sphag Moss you know you aren’t polluting the earth with products when you dump your waste.

    I always have a bottle of hand wash or body wash in the van.  I use these interchangeably for washing my hands and my body.  If we are somewhere with bathroom facilities, bonus.  If not, we are usually by a river.  So I get wet and then get out.  I soap myself up and then use a bucket to rinse off, but not near the water source.  I don’t want to upset the drinking supply for anyone downstream.  As I am using Tri Nature body wash or hand wash, I know I won’t harm the grass or plants by rinsing on them.  This makes me happy.

    I always travel with my essential oil first aid kit as well.

    I hope that this list is helpful for you all on your next adventure!

    What do you do to stay green in the bush?  Let me know in the comments below 🙂