Travel lifesaver - a period cup

So, a bit of a different topic today, but one that you can't ignore when travelling as a woman, period. I mean, periods! Yeah, it's the one thing I'm always worried about. Ah, let's book a skiing holiday! Oh no, what if I have my period and two full days of cramps? Let's go diving! Ohhhh, but what if......................... Sometimes life sucks as a woman, and while it's a bit easier if you can take a contraceptive pill and have the upper hand over your periods, I can't, so I've had to work my way around it. Aside from that, putting a bunch of hormones in your body is something I'm not very fond of anyways because of all the side-effects it can have, although some women of course hardly experience any! Since there are more women who have to, or want to, get rid of all the hormonal stuff, the period-market is opening up! Yay. A couple of years ago I've found my near-perfect solution and while it still sucks to have my period, and to be subjected to two full days of pain, it has made my life a lot easier.

A cup!? Yes, a cup.......

About three years ago, I saw this add on Facebook for the Organicup. What? A cup? For your periods? How does that work? I had no idea, but it caught my attention! I was trying to live more sustainably and to reduce my waste, so this seemed to fit right into my lifestyle. After doing some research I found out that there were a couple (not as many as today) of period-cups on the market. These are small cups, that you can insert in your you-know-what, and which you have to empty around 3 times a day. You'll never need tampons or sanitary napkins ever again! WHAT A BLESSING! And if you use them correctly they can last for 10 years. Imagine how much money and unnecessary waste you can save! I was convinced, so I decided to buy one. Since the Organicup had good reviews, is vegan and free of chemicals, this was going to be the one. 25 euros, but only the best for my.... since I wouldn't want to put any chemicals in there (I believe this can be the case with some of the cheap cups you can buy on AliExpress for example). Now there are many more options, of which probably a bunch are safe. The only way to know which one is best for you eventually, is just to try them out. Which was what I was going to do. Eventually, I found the Organicup quite stiff, which didn't work for me, but in Germany I bought a Fair Squared cup (which was also slightly cheaper) which was a lot more comfortable. Unfortunately I totally burned it because I was boiling it and forgot, so I had to buy a new one. It seems like there can be minor differences since this one works a little bit less well for me, but I'm still super satisfied and wouldn't want to go back to anything else anymore!

The first try

Within a couple of weeks the cup arrived. There are two sizes, the small one for women whom haven't had kids, and the bigger one for women who had. The thing looked a bit uncomfortable, and I couldn't imagine not feeling that thing the whole day even though that was what many women mentioned. After reading through the instructions of how to use it (boil it first, fold it double and insert and twist), I decided to give it a try. It was a bit uncomfortable at first, so I decided not to ditch my previous period-stuff immediately. I would definitely recommend to combine it with sanitary napkins or panty-liners on your first couple of tries, just to make sure you get a hang of how to put it in. The important part that I only found out after a couple of tries, is to twist the thing after putting it in. In that way you make sure it creates a vacuum, so that no stuff can pass it. Then, depending on how heavy your periods are, you have to empty it a couple of times a day, since it fills up. I believe it is recommended not to leave the cup in for more than 12 hours at the most, but emptying it more often is of course more hygienic.

Cleaning

This is where I started to appreciate the toilets with a little tab inside of the toilet room. What a lifesaver! Although I believe these cups shouldn't be a taboo anymore, I do feel slightly awkward walking around with a cup with my period blood and emptying it in the sink next to someone who's washing their hands. But well, sometimes there's just no other option. Every time you take it out and empty it in the toilet, you have to clean it before using it again. The best way is just to wash it with some water (and make sure the vacuum holes on the side are clean as well). I usually do this in the shower in the morning, which makes things a lot easier. However, if water is not at hand (which is the case in some washrooms), then there are three other options; (1) bring your own bottle of water and just wash it above the toilet, (2) clean it as much as you can with toilet paper, (3) use the Organiwash or Organiwipes.

Before every first use, make sure to boil it in water for about 5-10 minutes as to fully clean it. This is the only real obstacle I found while travelling. During my last trip, which would be a packpacking trip through Asia for some months, I was mostly worried about this part. Staying in a hostel, there are always people around you, so boiling a period cup in a hostel pot can be a bit awkward. Or maybe there isn't even a kitchen available, if you're in the middle of the jungle for example. To work my way around this, I looked for other options. Eventually I found out about Organiwash and Organiwipes. I figured this would be a good way to clean the cup while not having access to a kitchen or anything, and whenever it would be possibly I would just boil it then. Eventually this worked out well, and makes travelling a lot easier!

The pros

For me this cup makes travelling a lot easier. I don't have to worry about where to buy sanitary products, or where to throw them out. It saves tons of money, and I can still take part in activities that I otherwise wouldn't have been able to, such as snorkeling, diving, surfing, or any other sport for that matter. Also, I'm happy that I don't have to use all these throwaway product anymore. So much unnecessary waste every month!! However, the most important reason why I'm happy with my cup is just because it makes life so much more comfortable. I hate the feeling of most sanitary products, it feels unhygienic, you have to change them quite often, and there's a possibility of ilnesses if you don't. With this cup, I really don't feel anything throughout the day (the only problem with this is that sometimes I forget that it is still inside), so yeah, it makes my life a lot easier.

The cons

Personally, I can't find many cons, but there are some. The biggest one for me is that every cup is a bit different and it can therefore be difficult to find the right one. If it doesn't go in correctly or doesn't entirely fit well, then it can leak a bit. This is not really a problem, but 100% leakproof is of course the best. On my worst days this isn't always the case with my current one (the previous one, the one I totally burned, was perfect though), so I wear panty-liners on these days anyway. I did recently buy washable ones though (yeah, they exist as well!! :D), since this eventually is cheaper and better. Another con is the washing, obviously. You can't simply throw it away and be rid of it (or well, you can, but this will cost you about 25 euro's every time). However, when you get used to washing it, you'll find your own way to deal with inconvenient situations. The last con I can come up with is that it can take some time to learn how to use it, but that is easily overcome by just trying.

All in all, I'm super happy with my period cup. It is my most important travel companion (with the Organiwash) on longer trips and I wouldn't want to live without it anymore. It's definitely worth the money, since you'll save loads in the future, and it adds to your sustainable lifestyle as well! Of course, everyone has their own preferences, so I can only speak for myself, but if you're in doubt about getting one, just try it! And if you have any questions about my experience, just post them in the comments below :).

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4 tips for sustainable travel products

Hi everyone!

As you might have noticed, lately I've been trying to figure out how to live more sustainably. However, while I'm getting better at it at home, my travels could do with a sustainability upgrade as well. Therefore, I've been gathering some tricks I use at home, that could also be used for travelling.

1. Get a safety razor
This is definitely one of my favorite lifestyle changes and it could easily be used for travelling as well. I have been using disposable razors for so long, and never really thought about how damaging they are for the environment due to packaging and all the plastic used for the razors themselves (I'm not even talking about production emissions etc). Recently I saw a post somewhere about a safety razor, which made me wonder whether this would be a good alternative. It turns out, many people before me have asked the same question and hundreds of blogs are written about it. Great! So after reading some experiences of other bloggers, I decided to buy one. Without putting too much effort into it, I choose the "Feather safety razor populair" at https://www.thealphamen.nl/feather-safety-razor-populair-2-mesjes.html which costs 20 euros and comes with 2 blades. I didn't want to spend too much money on one in case I didn't like it, but in hindsight, it would have been better if I bought a safety razor that was 100% metal and maybe a little bit more expensive.

I'm very happy with my safety razor (maybe I'll write a whole blog about it sometime as well..). I was a bit scared when I used it for the first time, because it's such a sharp razor and a new experience, but this turned out to be totally unnecessary. It's super easy and it's so much better than disposable razors with 2,3,4,5 blades. You can use the razor everywhere (just be a bit more careful in sensitive areas), and you really get a clean and good shave which lasts much longer. For a sustainable shaving cream, especially when travelling, it's easiest to have a soap bar with you, or some coconut or olive oil. This works really well and is super easy. You can just bring a bit of oil with you on your travels and only use a little bit every time you shave.

By the way, the disposable razor blades last about 1-2 months depending on how often you use it, and are recyclable.

2. Rice water hair boost
One of the things I really dislike when I'm travelling, is when my hair gets dry. Certain climates can be really tough on your hair and damage it, and usually spending much time on revitalising your hair is not a priority when travelling. So recently, I found out about an easy trick to give your hair a little boost, and it can be done almost everywhere!

What you do is you boil rice with 1.5 or 2 times the amount of water you would have actually needed for cooking the rice. When it's finished you drain the excess water and keep it separate. Let it cool down until it's colder, cover your hair and scalp in it (for example by putting the water in a bowl and dipping your hair and head in) and let it sit for about 15-20 minutes. Then rinse it out and your hair will be super soft again!

If you use conditioner as well, do this after conditioning - You can also mix the rice water with green tea to make your hair more shiny - if you have too much rice water, store it in the fridge so you can use more later - you have to figure out yourself how much to use it, I think most people say once a week/two weeks/month. Or you can just use it whenever your hair feels like it needs a boost.

3. Bring a water bottle and/or sustainable cup with you on your trip
Just like at home, you can bring your own water bottle or coffee cup when you go somewhere. This can safe millions of plastic or paper alternatives. Always ask people to use your cup for a drink your ordering, and fill your own bottle with water. A Stojo cup (https://stojo.co/) is a very good option for travellers since it is foldable and therefore takes up less space in your bag.

4. Bring your own chopsticks
Okay, maybe this one doesn't count for all your travels, but mainly relates to travelling in south-east Asia, but it really helps save on wooden products. I have experience travelling in Japan and everywhere you buy some food, you get disposable wooden chopsticks in plastic packaging. Imagine saying no to all of these and just using your own chopsticks? It's so easy! I think on the worst days I could have saved over 8 pairs of chopsticks if I did this, and that would be only in one day. So from now on, I'm gonna bring my own and say no to the disposable ones :).

These are just some simple tricks and tips for more sustainable travels. There are lots more to be found on the internet and more blog posts by me will follow in the future as well. But for now, you can read my blogpost about reducing your carbon footprint while travelling here, about sustainable and ethical travelling here and flight compensation here.

Cheers,

Hannah

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Travelling sustainably and ethically: tips & tricks

Hey everyone,

Today I want to talk about travelling sustainably and ethically, since I think these are two of the most important things if you want to keep travelling and enjoying cultures/natures.

So much can be learnt through travelling. It is meaningful and wonderful and gives us the opportunity to explore other ways of thinking, other cultures, other perspectives on things and not to mention a great variety of beautiful ecosystems. It is easy to assume that the way we do things here is the right way, that how we live, is how it should be, but travelling can totally mess this idea up, in a good way :). However, tourism can also put great stress on other cultures and ecosystems. Whole societies can change and disappear if tourism is performed in an unsustainable way. In this day and age in which travelling is so popular, easy and cheap, it is therefore very important to travel sustainably to sustain a place and its character.

So what makes travelling sustainable? Many ideas and opinions exist about this, but I think it comes down to focussing on these things: respect, ethics, eco-tourism. Again, these terms can be interpreted in multiple ways of course haha.

Respect is one of the main things if you want to be accepted into a culture, but also preserve a culture. Respect begins with researching the country you're visiting. This means looking into the culture, the rules, the unwritten rules and sometimes even the language if you're up for it. Getting to know a culture before you see it (by reading, watching movies/documentaries, researching the internet) can already increase your respect for it. Even though you might already think you are respectful, understanding exactly what and why will help you to act on it even better! And, it's also great fun to know so much about a culture. You can talk to local people about it, or explain things to other tourists which in turn helps them to travel more sustainably as well.

Being respectful and being ethical has a lot in common. However, being ethical to me means that you are aware of what you do and how you do it, and that you really try to limit any negative impact you can have on cultures/environments. This means that for everything you decide to do, you do some research on how, why, where and by whom. So if you want to visit a local village for example, how is the trip conducted, what are the real reasons behind the trip (making money or supporting the local industry?), where are you going (what kind of village is it? Are they real local places, or are they places set up for tourism and making money?) and who is conducting the tour (is it local, what do they spend the profit on? etc). Of course, some of these things are really difficult to find out, but by trying to dig deeper than just booking the first cheap option, you might really have a positive impact on local cultures and help in preserving them. The same can be important for animal/wildlife shelters.

Ecotourism, a term defined by the World Conservation Union as "Environmentally responsible travel to natural areas, in order to enjoy and appreciate nature (and accompanying cultural features, both past and present) that promote conservation, have a low visitor impact and provide for beneficially active socio-economic involvement of local peoples." As you can read In ecotourism a big part of the money made by tourism is usually put into conservation practices, like tree planting, preserving lands or helping animals. This goes hand-in-hand with cultural conservation. It's all about minimising your impact on the environment and being aware of what you can do (through tourism) to preserve the country you're visiting. Again, you can do research on the impacts of certain things you want to do. You can also find out which place you should and shouldn't visit by reading reviews for example. For example in Thailand, elephant riding can be a very popular activity for tourists, but it is terrible for the elephants. If you do want to see an elephant though, or maybe even be super close to one, you can visit an animal/elephant shelter where the elephants live that were rescued from these terrible circumstances. Often, you can also volunteer at these places which helps them in taking care of the animals and sheltering more animals.

If you want to know more about eco-tourism, check out this page for example: https://ecotourism.org/news/

Well, I think it's all about pre-reading, which is also a fun way to prepare for your travels. Learning about a country can help you in making sustainable decicions. Travel in a local way, eat in a local way and sleep locally, this can all help in preserving nature, food and whole cultures. If you have more suggestions, let me know! Good luck with planning your sustainable travels :).

Cheers,

Hannah

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Travelling and the climate: what you could and shouldn't do

Climate has been on the forefront of international negotiations in the past decades. The evidence of human-induced climate change and its consequences is abundant and ever increasing. While states are delving into seemingly never-ending negotiations, citizens and other non-state actors are increasingly acting on reducing emission through all kinds of easy and more inventive ways. One contradicting issue rises, however; the increase in welfare in combination with decreasing flight prices is causing a boost in international aviation numbers. While I am trying to be a person who lives in a sustainable way, I have to admit that I am also one of the people contributing to air pollution by flying to Japan, Ecuador, London, etc. I find it difficult to come clean with myself about how much I am polluting through my travels, especially since this is one of the things which makes me truly happy. I became vegan for the environment, I take very short showers, I stopped using shampoo, I try to buy local products mostly, but then my flight just compensate for more than everything I am trying to contribute. Therefore, in this blog I want to write a bit about sustainable ways of travelling, to make myself more aware, but also to maybe help you if you're struggling with the same contradicting lifestyle.

While there is so much knowledge about pollution and travelling I will not claim to use everything here. That would just be way too much to cover in one blogpost. I will, however, look at trustworthy pages and share them with you (some might be in Dutch, but I will summarize what they say here). First of all for example, the Dutch website www.milieucentraal.nl, an organization focussing on the environment which was started by the former ministry of environment in 1988. They have a page called 'Vliegen of ander vakantie vervoer' which means 'flying or other ways of holiday-travelling' (https://www.milieucentraal.nl/duurzaam-vervoer/vliegen-of-ander-vakantievervoer/). On their page they give a simple comparison of the pollution caused by different ways of travelling. Visiting the page can be useful even if you do not understand Dutch since they show some figures you might understand. They give four tips, useful to keep in mind when planning your holidays:

Go less often on holidays, but go for a longer period of time
Travel by train or touring car to reduce your contribution to pollution
Choose a suitable destination close to home, so if you want to a sunny place to lay on the beach and tan, go to Portugal instead of South America for example. You can do the same and you can seriously lower your environmental impact.
Compensate for your pollution by investing in sustainable energy or tree planting (however, make sure you choose the right project for planting trees, since they are not always very socially sustainable since the trees might be planted on other peoples bought territory in African countries for example).

They also compared several ways of travelling within Europe with the first one being the most sustainable: train/touring car, car with multiple people, airplane or car with only one person. However, they say you have to keep in mind the type of car your travelling with, since some are more sustainable than others. A trip by plane is usually around 7-11x more of a burden on the environment than a trip by train.

If you do decide to fly, however, then you can at least try to reduce the impact as much as possible by keeping in mind the following things:

Most of the times a direct flight is the best. For long intercontinental flights, however, this might be different.
Fly with an aviation company that uses modern planes and that cares for the environment (check their website for example or call the company)
Flights of companies trying to be as cheap as possible might be more sustainable than more expansive flights since they try to fit as many people in the plane as possible. However, they should then use modern planes.
Again, choose a good destination close to home
Travel by public transport to and from the airport
Compensate!

The Guardian also released an interesting article about the impacts of flying. The article is from 2008, so a long time ago, but you can get the idea: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/apr/06/aviation-q-and-a . One of the important things they mention is that the impact of flying is not just about CO2 emissions, since this is not the only impact flying has on the environment. The contribution to global warming is often much higher than what you expect only based on CO2 emissions.

A relatively recent article in The Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/climate/airplane-pollution-global-warming.html) also stresses how bad flying is for the environment. However, they again give some recommendations to keep in mind

Fly less
Offset it
Fly coach
Listen to flight attendants (they sometimes give some hidden fuel saving tips)
Know your fuels

If you want to know more about these tips I suggest you read the article since it is interesting to read and well-written!

Yale Climate Connections also offers a good explanation of flying and its impacts. It is definitely worth a read: https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-math-of-flying-vs-driving/

So what now?

Well, I am still in doubt about my next trip and definitely more aware of what I should and should not do. Now I at least know how I can reduce my impact if I decide to keep travelling by plane, which I am honestly not yet ready to totally give up. I am focussing more on other modes of travelling however. Especially travelling by train has caught my attention since you see so much more of the country then by flying, and since it's effortless in comparison to driving or biking. For example: I would love to go to China, and one way to do this and at the same time see so much of other countries is by taking the Trans Mongolian Railway for example. There is also the Danube Express in Europe (which is more of a luxury train), the Ghan in Australia, the California Zephyr in the USA, the Golden Eagly (Moscow-Tehran). The Telegraph also gives a great overview of train rides in the world https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/rail-journeys/the-25-greatest-train-journeys-in-the-world/. While it might take longer to travel by train, it is worth it when you decide to take fewer but longer trips. Other ways of travelling are by foot, bike or boat.

Well, I hope you learned something throughout this blog and that you can make up your mind. Good luck and enjoy planning your next trip! I see reducing my emissions as a fun and rewarding challenge.

Cheers,
Hannah