For the last 7 years or so, I’ve been on a mission to live as sustainably as possible – whether that’s in a house, hotels, or in our campervan. Vanlife is often associated with being surrounded by nature, living off the grid, and being at one with the world. But it surprised me at how easy it is to be unsustainable living on the road. So, here are my top tips for eco-friendly vanlife!

Toilets

So, lets start with what seems to be a popular subject on my blog… toilets!! We have a compostable toilet meaning we do not use any chemicals. We use coconut coir to naturally turn our poop into compost. And we neutralise the smell of the wee compartment with lemon scented vinegar. This also means we don’t have to use a special point for depositing chemicals to sort out our toilet, we can just use normal toilets. So it’s a win for us and a win for nature!

Laundry

We tend to do about two washes per month at local laundrettes (eco friendly ones when we can find them). Over the last few months, we discovered a Scrubba wash bag which makes it possible to do small washes (like underwear) by hand! With this, we only need to go to the laundrettes every three weeks / once a month saving HUGE amounts of water and energy (& some money!).

Have you ever seen someone so happy to be washing undies!?

Beauty

Top of the list here has to be my safety razor (I’ve linked it here in case you’ve not heard of it before). It eliminates the need to buy lots of razors and I’m still really happy using it after two years. All you need to do is replace the blade after every couple of uses meaning the only waste is a small bit of metal. It feels so much better using this than the crappy plastic razors that you can just imagine piled up in landfill.

Next is a more recent discovery which is Dr Bronner’s Lavendar All-One Magic Soap. This stuff is insane! I use it for cleaning the hob, the worktops, my body, and to do our wash bag laundry! It smells amazing and you only need the smallest amount meaning our 1L bottle will probably last a full year. You can use it for brushing your teeth but I’m not quite that brave yet!

Something I’ve also been really interested in this year is herbalism. Learning about the power of plants has been amazing! And what’s been even more fun is putting this into practice and buying local ingredients to make my own face oils and body balms. I bought dried calendula and olive oil in Spain and made a face oil which I absolutely love. Zero plastic used and I can make enough to last me a few years!

Water and electricity

We have 66 liters in our water tank meaning we naturally have to be very conservative with water usage. The average person in the UK uses about 142 liters of water per day… so it is safe to say we are forced to be sustainable with water usage as 66 liters (for two of us) usually lasts us between 3-4 days. We manage this with super short showers, only filling the sink with a little bit of water to wash our dishes, and not having a flushing toilet helps.

Also, I am so so happy that our electricity bill is the grand total of £0! The beautiful yellow ball of energy in the sky that some people call the sun gives us all the power that we need. We don’t even carry our electric hookup cable with us because we don’t need it! How awesome is that!!

Food

George, Bruce and myself are all vegan. So we are very sustainable food wise. We try to make sure all the veggies we buy haven’t been flown across the world but hey, we’re human, and I’m working on not being too much of a perfectionist. We will always go to the local cafes as well instead of chains. It makes us happier and it also means you can support small businesses.

Phone contract

This is a bit of a random one that I’d never thought of before until reading Ethical Consumer which is an incredible website by the way. My phone contract is now with Meaningful Planet where 10% of your monthly payment goes to rewilding projects in the UK! I also write for a compassionate conservation organisation and wrote an article this year about rewilding. So it is so nice to be able to contribute to projects through my phone contract.

So.. this is where I am up to so far with trying to be as sustainable as possible! If there is anything I have missed, PLEASE let me know. I love our planet and I want to take care of it as much as I can.