The life cycle of a plastic bottle

{Wanderlustitis}: inflammation of the desire to explore.

UK-based tour operator Steppes Travel is organising a fantastic travel festival for all ages this w/e in London: Beyond Travel. I have never used their services but I have long admired Steppes’ commitment to shed a light on sustainability in travel, and their dedication to promote all roads less travelled. The company has donated over £1.2 million since its creation in 1989, to a variety of environmental, conservation and humanitarian projects and in the same spirit, all the profits from the Beyond festival will be donated to their #REFUSETOUSE charity partners aka refuse to use plastic.

I recently met founder Justin Wateridge, who kindly offered a 30% discount on the tickets of the festival to all of you my dear BozAround readers: simply enter the code insta30 at check out (in fact, most events are free to children).

It took me ages to decide which panels to attend with the family {a clear sign of wanderlustitis}: there are over 50 speakers scheduled over the two-day program and so many relevant topics. The highlight, of course, is legendary explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes closing the event but there are many other discussions that will be excellent food for thoughts for the young and the not-so-young minds:

• Real-life mermaid Hanli Prinsloo will talk about why it is so important to conserve and protect our oceans. She is a champion free diver and ocean conservationist who can hold her breath underwater for five minutes and thirty-nine seconds!
• Amy Dickman is a conservation biologist passionate about saving Big Cats. She’ll share how she established Ruaha Carnivore Project (RCP) and developed a conservation initiative against a backdrop of poverty, tribal traditions and fears of witchcraft.
• Amy & Ella Meek, the 13-and-11-year-old founders of the campaign Kids Against Plastic
• Paul Barrett, a world-leading expert on the evolution and biology of dinosaurs and other extinct reptiles

And many more.. Use the filter Great For Kids to navigate the program.

Steppes Travel is launching the hashtag #refusetouse at the festival, in order to highlight the huge efforts needed to free the planet from plastic pollution. This little video explains the enormous dangers faced by our oceans with plastic pollutions. And have you read today’s interview of Sir David Attenborough talking about that same dreadful topic?

All of this echoes with some useful tips shared by my favourite travelling family on Instagram: Our Open Road

1. Don’t buy bottled water. On the road we fill our tanks directly, and when suitable water isn’t available we purchase refillable 20 liter bottles to transfer into our holding tank and to our jerrycans. We port reusable water bottles for daily use in the city or on the trail.

2. Carry cloth bags for shopping. Many markets require every vegetable to be separately bagged & weighed- a practice which as infuriating as it is wasteful- and so we reuse these bags many times over before they eventually become our garbage bags.

3. Buy cardboard and glass. When possible we choose products with paper packaging or glass, over plastic.

4. Food storage– we use upcycled glass jars (from above purchases) and tiffins to keep food, skipping the purchase of ziplock bags. Living on the road, glass jars do break, but we find it’s easy enough to replace them with that next jelly jar.

5. Eat what you order. When we do dine out, we try to order just as much food as we will eat to avoid the overpacking typical when getting food to go, while not wasting the precious resource that is food. This is one we struggle with most- kiddos who are sometimes starving and sometimes not, this variable is harder to manage.

see you at Beyond with the kids:)

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