So, back to where I started, in Budapest. There are a myriad of options to buy in bulk; – even a zero waste shop opened recently, called Ligeti bolt – it was really child’s play to come close to zero waste. You need to research a bit and pay attention to it in everyday life, but nothing major. Sadly, in a long term bike traveling trip this can’t be achieved fully, but on the other side of the scale there are several things which tips the balance back to its place.

In a flat you can’t do composting easily, which puts important materials back to the natural cycle, instead of creating methane at a landfill. There is vermicomposting and the bokashi bin, but in many cases, there is not enough space/time or patience to use these. Another thing is water usage, which we overdo a lot, even if we only shower every day. After all, we use drinking water to get rid of yet another useful material for composting. As for recreation or on holiday, it’s more than likely that someone will use a plane or a car, which I don’t think I have to say more about. I didn’t use a car, but I suspect many do inside the city too, looking at the traffic in Budapest.

On the other hand, traveling by bikes we get much closer to nature – depending on the amount of wild camping. These days, it’s not a question that every organic material gets back into the ground, and our water usage decreases to a minimal level; on a not too hot day, we use up about 10-15 litres between the two of us. This includes even dishwashing sometimes, and of course cooking, handwashing, and a quick cleaning of the important parts. Because yes, we don’t shower every day, there are times when even a week passes by. This was mainly the case in the Italian Alps, when the weather was chilly and rainy, and even though we came across some lakes and rivers, we were quite reluctant to jump in.

One more thing helps a lot, which is merino wool, enabling us to wear the same shirt for 3-4 days without any major smell problems. Plus point for having less plastic clothing. Since you probably know that the current fast fashion clothes (H&M and the like) are mainly made of plastic, and get tossed after a few uses generally. Not that plastic is the only problem in this industry; I suggest you check out a film called “The true cost”, to get a little more insight about it. And maybe it’s stating the obvious, but our way of travel is way more environmental friendly, not to mention cheap as well. Although we need to cross the oceans, we will try to avoid flying as much as possible.

The bad part is that we can’t really avoid plastic packaging with having a budget in mind. It’s not that we can’t get fresh produce or bread without it, because this was possible everywhere so far. I can proudly say that apart from one mishap in Montenegro we didn’t accept any plastic bags while shopping so far. Although our food bags were two big plastic bags inside our bike bags, we only needed to replace them once in 4 months, which is not too bad. Sadly they went missing in Prishtina in the hostel (along with our small spice boxes), so I sew big bags too from my usual curtain material (which I also use for produce or nuts) to replace them. J

But we need way more calories when we cycle around 60km a day, and pasta, rice, or chocolate is rarely available in paper. Most of the times, I’m happy if we can buy oats in paper bags. And because it’s an excellent cheap calorie source, the simplest salty chips is a frequenter too (which doesn’t contain any nasty additives). The thing is, we could do without it, but we also like it and we don’t try to be 100% zero waste, just do what we can while enjoying life.

In addition to this, we can’t avoid cans, or rarely able to buy cheese over the counter in our own container (unless we find someone selling it in the countryside). Imagine a small village/resort town shop, giving you the only option to buy food for the day. You just have to make do with what you get. Not even mentioning that being on a budget, we are searching for the best value for money, which often translates to buying the plastic option.