Plastic free travel - a softly spoken woman leads the way

We’ve been thinking about the problem of single-use plastic waste and travel since we opened The Old Compass Cafe in Saigon in 2016. Last week I met a softly spoken traveller, Susan Beckett, from Iowa in the US, in a cafe in Siem Reap. She set an amazing example of plastic-free travel. She’d managed to make her way through Vietnam and Cambodia, using almost no plastic in her eating and drinking. She was no anti-plastic evangelical - more someone concerned about the environment in everything she does. And she preferred to take action than talk. She shamed me with her simple, well-thought out approach to plastic-free travel. We got chatting because the plastic free thing is quite visible in the tourism industry in Siem Reap. Plastic straws are rare. And a refillable water canister scheme is in place in many cafes too. I’m not sure how successful these initiatives are - but Susan had a refillable canister, and I bought one too. More important though, Susan travels with her own purifier - which is what’s made all the difference. She purifies tap water as she goes - removing any dependence on plastic water bottles. Susan was using a water purifier from a company called Grayl. I’ll be picking one up soon. I’ll let you know how it works out. Let us know if you have experience with purifiers too. The refillable water canister project in Cambodia is called Refill not Landfill.