Heading off on your summer holiday doesn’t mean you have to leave your sustainable conscience behind.
Most of the items you need for lounging on a beach or campsite have biobased or circular substitutes that are more eco-friendly than conventional products.
We show you how to holiday with a lighter impact by incorporating renewable and upcycled products into your summer packing.
Biobased beach toys for greener play
Spades and buckets are a must for curious young beachcombers. This summer, you can help keep their exploration instincts more sustainable with petroleum-free beach toys.
Bigjigs makes a bioplastic toy spade from agricultural waste, namely wheat fibre. Products made from waste materials in general will have a smaller carbon footprint than those from petroleum oil, which go into the vast majority of children’s toys on the market.
Green Toys has a more elaborate range of sustainable beach toys for budding sand architects. A dumper truck made of 100% recycled milk jugs has all the colour and character a child’s toy needs but comes with a lighter environmental load than new plastic.
The company’s recycled amphibious aircraft toys – the Seacopter or Seaplane – will be another beach play hit, with buoyant stabilisers for hours of fun.
For the classic beach toy kit, Green Toys’ Sand Play set combines a bucket, sand castle mould, a spade and rake made from 100 percent recycled materials.
Some toys support beach clean-up. For adults, Bureo’s frisbee is made in California from recycled fishing nets – a huge source of marine plastic pollution globally that both releases microplastics and ensnares wildlife.
Remember that buying anything second hand will almost always trump new purchases in the sustainability stakes. There will be a stunning range of pre-loved beach toys online that will save you money, cut resource demand, and reduce pollution.
Eco-friendly bikinis
Outdoor swimming is a spectacular way to wile away a summer’s day. However, the bikinis and trunks you are used to are likely contributing to toxic microplastics pollution.
Swimwear is notorious for its reliance on oil-based plastic fibres: polyester and nylon are the major ingredients. Whenever you wear swimming gear made from these, they release a stream of microscopic plastic particles into the water around you.
Microplastics are one of the most serious environmental and health hazards of our time. They have contaminated everywhere from beaches to the deep ocean, disrupting the biology of living organisms right up through the food chain – from fish to humans.
Unfortunately, a recent study found no difference in the amount of microplastics shed by recycled and non-recycled activewear materials.
Further, bioplastics and oil-based plastics alike shed damaging particles, meaning you need other, non-plastic biomaterials for a greener swim.
Cotton is one of the better options as its organic fibres harmlessly break down in the water. Organic cotton is even better from an ecological perspective since it demands fewer pesticides compared to conventional cotton. Other sustainable swimwear materials are hemp and bamboo, both plants that can form weavable fibres.
MovesGood makes a 90% bamboo textile and 10% elastane bikini set. BeachCandy offers swimwear ranges with a mix of hemp and organic cotton. For Children, Pure Earth Collection sells swimming costumes made from 98% organic cotton, 2% lycra, and non-toxic yet bright dyes.
Most hemp or bamboo swimwear contains a small portion of conventional plastic in the mix to achieve the right elasticity and fit. On the whole, however, these non-plastic fibres will cut the polluting potential of your swimming gear compared to conventional options.
Eco-picnicking
Plastic is the ideal picnic material – easy to clean, less prone to shatter, and light. Yet a petrochemical dinner set seems at odds with the idea of picnicking in nature.
Nowadays, you can dispense with petrochemicals altogether in your outdoor lunch. One option is Skaza’s sugarcane bioplastic picnic set for four. It contains portable plates, cutlery, and more. The carrier strap is made from cotton.
Skanza’s sugar cane picnic set is as light as an ordinary plastic but it is made of 81% sugarcane. In general, circular bioplastics like this emit far less carbon during manufacture than ordinary plastics, making for a more sustainable option than oil-based plastic sets.
Sugarcane is renewable, unlike the petroleum that goes into ordinary plastics. Importantly, it is also a circular raw material – a byproduct of sugar manufacturing that is usually discarded.
Finally, a picnic wouldn’t be a picnic without a blanket. Unfortunately, many on the market are made with cheap plastic fibres that come from petroleum and are not biodegradable. Often, the waterproofed lining relies on synthetic chemicals and plastic too.
Sustainable producers will opt for all-natural materials, especially materials that are waste byproducts of other industries. One example is the UK manufacturer Tweedmill, which has eliminated plastics from its ‘random recycled’ picnic rug product.
This thick picnic blanket is made from wool weaving byproducts, making it circular and less resource-intensive than blankets which use virgin wool. To lighten its environmental load even more, the rug is backed with waxed cotton instead of plastic lining for water resistance.
Again, second-hand options are usually far more sustainable than any manufactured product. The longer you use an item, too, the more sustainable it becomes because it avoids adding to fresh demand for raw materials and the energy needed to process them.
Old fridges become cool bags
Cooler bags are an essential piece of kit for campers and beach-goers in summer. Today, oil-based plastics are the go-to material for its powerful insulating properties.
Recycled versions are more environmentally friendly. One innovative brand on the market is Retulp’s Fridgebag, marketed as the world’s first cool bag made from recycled fridges.
Fridges are full of plastic: thin handles, shelves, doors, and shelves. As demand for refrigeration grows globally, we need scaled and sustainable solutions for end of life options.
Products like Fridgebag normalise a circular approach to used fridges. Turning potential landfill waste into new and high-value consumer goods can prevent this material from being dumped in landfill sites.
The sustainability impact of upcycling can be significant. Each upcycled plastic appliance cuts some demand for virgin petrochemicals.
Eco-friendly snorkelling
What’s a trip to the beach without the magic of snorkeling? The wonder of seeing underwate worlds is undeniable. Yet most of the gear involved is full of petroleum plastic.
With 5.2 trillion pieces of plastic waste estimated to be in the oceans, plastic dependence puts a dampener on a sport that should be helping care for marine ecosystems.
Today, more manufacturers are developing sustainable gear. Fourth Element is among the best known, using natural rubber for a more sustainable surface suit in its Surface suit.
Most often, wetsuits are made from neoprene. This non-biodegradable material takes a lot of energy to manufacture. The natural material offers a lighter alternative.
Fourth Element’s natural rubber suit also uses ocean-friendly glues and inks while the inner and outer lining are made from recycled plastic bottles.
If you’re packing goggle defogger, don’t forget to use Stream2Sea’s reef-safe, biodegradable formulation.
Ghost-gear kayaks clean up coastlines
Kayaking is an exciting way to see coastlines and waterways. Yet this is another holiday sport that relies heavily on petrochemical plastics.
British startup Odyssey Innovation is doing important work making kayaks out of discarded plastic fishing equipment – also known as ghost gear.
Discarded or ‘ghost’ fishing gear is a huge problem globally. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of this material on the beaches of England.
The company sources waste feedstock from local anglers as well as the anti-litter group ‘Keep Britain Tidy’. This waste-to-kayak pipeline is helping fishers in Cornwall, England recycle up to 60 percent more of their used gear.
This company has pioneered an innovative, conservation-centric business model too. Founder Rob Thompson says he makes 10 percent profit on the cost of his recycled kayaks, a portion of which funds further beach clean-up activities.
Natural sandals
Sandals are a must for beach holidays. By choosing more sustainable materials, you can quite literally make a greener footprint this summer.
Second-hand sandals are abundant but if you are going for a new purchase, natural materials are the best bet.
Natural rubber is a plastic alternative that can compost naturally at the end of its life. Sea Sense makes functional, colourful options from 100 perfect natural rubber and has eliminated plastic from the design altogether.
Cork is another light-weight footwear material that naturally biodegrades. These Corker flip flops from Gumbies are made with a comfortable cork footbed with recycled rubber outsoles. Even the cotton canvas toe posts and straps are recycled.
Take a raincheck
Summer storms needn’t make your holiday travels a misery. Stock up on slick sustainable raincoats and you can brave the downpours in eco-friendly style.
Outdoor wear like waterproof coats are usually awash in polluting plastics fibres like polyester and nylon but there are better options out there.
Waxed cotton jackets are one of the best choices you can make for sustainable rain gear. Not only is the cotton base material natural and biodegradable, the water resistant wax treatment is not toxic for the environment.
It is important to look at what coating material your raincoat uses. Most manufacturers use highly eco-toxic, non-biodegradable synthetic chemicals to create the rain-proof layer. Others use synthetic waxes based on petroleum.
However, high-performing biobased finishes achieve the same waterproofing effect without the eco-toxicity.
Patagonia, the leading name in sustainable outdoor wear, uses a 100 percent plant-based wax finish on its cotton outerwear. Waste olive oil, sunflower oil, and castor bean oil from the food industry go into making it.
It took a decade for Patagonia to formulate a plant-based coat wax that worked as well petroleum paraffin wax. The end result shows the functional power of plants to ease our dependence on petrochemicals.
