My (Not So) Zero Waste Camino

Back in April, I headed off to Europe to walk across Spain along the Camino Frances, from St Jean Pied-de-Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in the north-west corner of Spain. Over 35 days I walked 800km. I talked about what I packed before I left; now I’m back and the memory of those sore, sore feet is a little more distant, I thought I’d tell you how it went.

There’s so much I could say about the meaning of the experience, the people I met along the way and the community we grew, and my inner reflections… but this space is about zero waste and plastic-free living, minimalism and treading lightly.

Whilst my experience was a lot greater than learning about different recycling systems and wrestling in Spanish about not wanting a plastic straw, this is where I’m going to keep the focus. Plus, surely you all want to see some holiday recycling bin snapshots?!

Minimalism on the Camino

Packing light is something I’ve got pretty good at over the years, and all up my pack and everything I took (including the clothes I wore, but not my hiking boots) weighed less than 6kg.

Many of the people I met packed more than they needed, and ending up posting stuff ahead to collect later – or got their bags sent ahead as the weight was too much. I wanted to be able to carry my own bag.

I had intended to post ahead anything I didn’t need, but in the end, there wasn’t anything.

That’s not to say my packing was perfect. I definitely did not realise it was going to be so cold! There was snow on the second day, and I only had one long-sleeved top as well as my jacket. Not only that but when I hit sunnier climes, I wanted to wear long sleeves in the sun to stop my arms burning. Black wasn’t ideal for the hot sun.

After wearing said top for 8 hours, it needed washing (clearly). I could make it last a couple of days, but eventually it had to come off!

On day 3 I found an abandoned scarf (yes, it was abandoned, I promise) which probably saved me from freezing to death. Around day 20 I went and purchased some cycling sleeves (literally arm covers) – they can be worn with t-shirts to protect against the sun and are white, not black.

Did I pack anything I didn’t need? I could have got away with one pair of shorts, rather than two. I didn’t wear my vest top much. But these things were so light that it wasn’t the end of the world carrying them.

Plastic-Free on the Camino

I’m sure you know that I don’t buy things packaged in plastic. But when these things are offered to me, it turns out that the Camino had some different rules to everyday life.

I don’t believe in changing rules when you go on holiday. For me it is important to do what I can all the time. But there’s something different about being kilometres from the nearest town, exhausted and hungry, with sore shoulders and aching feet and the beginnings of blisters, and someone offering up chocolate packaged in plastic.

It should be noted that chocolate is my go-to comfort food. I ate that chocolate. Oh yes.

The other thing that I used was those individual plastic jam portions. Those ones I cringe about. In Spain, most places open fairly late in the morning, and there might only be one place open early in the morning to cater for peregrinos (people walking the camino). These places, almost without exception, offered dry (stale?) bread, or occasionally toast, and jam portions.

I don’t even like jam very much. But when this is the only opportunity for breakfast, stale bread alone just won’t cut it, and the next town is 8km away, you suck it up and use the damn jam portions.

Okay, maybe you don’t. But I did.

A couple of times there actually wasn’t anywhere open for breakfast, and I did have to walk 8km to find somewhere. Walking that far on an empty stomach (when you walked 20km the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that) isn’t much fun.

Sometimes it’s not obvious that nowhere will be open until that morning, so there’s no chance to buy snacks in advance. One thing you learn on the Camino, is that when there’s the opportunity to eat (and likewise, use the bathroom) take it because you don’t always know when the next opportunity will come.

In hindsight, what I’d do next time to avoid the jam is buy avocados along the way. They aren’t available in every town, but frequent enough, I think. I did this sometimes (and you have no idea how much avocado envy I’d get from fellow peregrinos when I whipped out my fresh avocado) but if I went back, I’d ensure I was always carrying one. (I’d use half, then carry the other half and use it the next day. They lasted fine.)

One other plastic-packaged thing I bought: medical supplies. Blister plasters (oh Compeed, thank you for everything you did for me) and ibuprofen, specifically. It was a matter of purchasing them and finishing the walk, or not purchasing them and not.

Zero Waste on the Camino

I took my reusables (water bottle, cup, container and spork, and an Onya bag) and all of them were very useful. The container was great for bulk snacks, leftovers, and water on the really hot days (it’s leakproof). The Onya bag was brilliant for buying snacks – fruit, nuts, potato chips (Spain sells bulk potato chips! Heaven!).

There wasn’t much food waste because cooking options are limited and it is easier (and fairly cheap) to eat the peregrino menus. Food waste was limited to peels, skins and rinds.

Composting was next to impossible. Going from place to place meant there was no time to figure out if there were composting options. The odd banana peel or piece avocado skin could be thrown into the undergrowth well off the path, but if there was no undergrowth, just dumping on the path wasn’t an option. As much as it pains me to put anything in the bin, it happened.

Recycling was fairly easy, and even the small villages had central recycling banks for paper, plastic and metal. Sometimes I’d have to carry things for a day or two, but eventually I’d find somewhere.

Plant-Based Eating on the Camino

If you want to walk the Camino as a vegan, it requires some serious forward planning, the commitment to cooking most of your own food – and bringing your own utensils – and (I’d guess) the ability to speak a little Spanish.

Even as a vegetarian, it is tricky. And you have to LOVE eggs.

I’d already decided that I was happy to eat eggs on the Camino before I left (tortilla de patatas, a potato omelette, is pretty much a Spanish staple) but by day 3 I’d decided to eat fish if there were no vegetarian options. When you’re walking that many kilometres every single day, asking the waiter to remove the tuna and egg from a salad and being left with only the lettuce, tomato and raw onion just isn’t going to cut it.

If you’re prepared you can cook beans and lentils and these are fairly easy to find dry in bulk. I wasn’t prepared. Lots of vegans take huge amounts of pre-packaged vegan food with them – and that wasn’t an option for me, either. Nut/soy milk is virtually non-existent.

Saying that, there are vegetarian and vegan options, particularly in the bigger cities. The Vegetarian Way has some details of vegetarian options, but some listings were permanently closed or only offered dinner for residents (not so helpful at lunchtime). I became a little obsessed with hunting down falafels (!) and found a caravan selling the best vegan burgers in the middle of a woodland, so there were definitely some highlights.

My (Not So) Zero Waste Camino: Lessons Learned

I don’t know really these are lessons learned, or whether they are simply things I already knew that were reinforced.

1. Zero waste and plastic-free living takes prior planning.

At home, we develop habits and incorporate this way of living into our daily routine. When we are away, there is no daily routine and so we have to research and plan ahead. Sure, I could have taken the time before I left to research composting options, or look up much more thoroughly the plant-based meal options.

In the end, I ran out of time, and I did the best I could. That’s not to say it isn’t possible, but it wasn’t possible for me, this time.

2. Everyone has limits to their time and energy.

I’ve talked about limits to time and energy before, but nothing drains you like walking 20km a day for 14 days in a row without stopping (it was 2 weeks before I took my first rest day). By the end of the day, climbing the stairs to get to my bed was hard enough (why oh why do they give the ground floor rooms to people who arrive first? They are fitter – make them climb the stairs!!!).

I know at the start of the trip I wouldn’t have been able to stand and cook a meal, let alone go to the shops and buy all the things I needed first. We can only do the best we can, and nothing tested my limits and showed me the absolute truth in this more than this walk.

3. Doing what we can is better than doing nothing.

I may have used plastic jam portions more than I care to remember, but I also refused plastic bags and straws, and purchased most of my snacks in bulk (except chocolate, but I made sure that was plastic-free).

I may have eaten fish and eggs, but I also tried to support every vegan/vegetarian cafe that I came across – and told my various vegetarian friends I met along the way about them, too.

To the purists, that may not be enough. But I’m not a purist. As much as I’d like to be perfect, I’m imperfect. I’m passionate about two many things to single-mindedly pursue the perfection of one. I do the best I can. I may have let a few things slide on the trip, but I didn’t let everything slide. It was a great learning experience, and I’m willing to admit my faults.

If I ever do a trip like this again, I promise I’ll come up with a plan to avoid those damn individual jam portions.

Now I’d love to hear from you! Do you have any questions about how I dealt with certain scenarios? Do you have insights from your own experience with a similar trip? Do you have any comments, ideas or anything else about any aspect of the trip? I’d love to hear your thoughts so please share below!

My (Not So) Zero Waste Camino
30 replies
  1. Rika
    Rika says:

    I think it’s a great thing you did there. Don’t sweat the jam portions! No one is perfect and I applaud you for trying. Living zero waste in a new country is difficult and it’s all about the little things. You will have made an impact on your fellow travellers.

    Reply
  2. amandawastefree
    amandawastefree says:

    I’ve been looking forward to this post Lindsay! Hiking is often quite hard to do without any waste. I actually just finished writing an article about zero waste tramping (as we call it in NZ)!

    Reply
  3. Jill Shuker
    Jill Shuker says:

    I support the first post Lindsay – you have done magnificently – don’t sweat the jam portions. Your plastic footprint metaphorically speaking must have been minimal. And you are right, there are too many thnaks to be passionate about. Well done.

    Reply
  4. Cynthia
    Cynthia says:

    We just came through a hurricane here and had to evacuate with hours’ notice. Tried to grab what we could from home to be as zero waste as possible but still ended up getting lots of packaging as our cooking facilities for the five days consisted of a microwave and a bathroom sink. I think you came through with flying colors, jam packets and all! I really do hope you ahare more about the experiences you had on the trail that did NOT have to do with zero waste. Please?

    Reply
  5. Alison Crawley
    Alison Crawley says:

    Yesterday, I walked into Santiago having done 1/3 of the km you did (Leon to Santiago) & if all you are worried about ia fewplastic jam containers, don’t! I did appreciate the very few wholefood cafe options we passed, including that caravan in the forest, but they were few & far between & lack of internet access meant searching for something on google was usually not possible & I also did not have the energy to wander around looking for something that was usually closed. I bought bulk pistachios & other nuts whenever I saw them & carried them in cotton bags I brought from home. I also bought fruit whenever I saw it, but sometimes it didn’t travel well in the heat in a pack. The rubbish, especially plastic bottles & wet wipes & toilet paper on & off the path was ever present & really disappointing. Women peed on the edge of the track, wipe themselves, dropped the wipe or tissue & walked on!! Worse happened behind the hedges. I brought along compost bin bags made of corn starch & a roll of my Don’t give a crap loo paper, but never used the bags. Used the loo paper for blowing my nose & carried it to one of those bin sets you photographed. I only came across 1 composting toilet – at the hermit knight at Mankato just after the Cruz devFero. Congratulations on your walking effort!

    Reply
    • Lindsay (Treading My Own Path)
      Lindsay (Treading My Own Path) says:

      Hey Alison, thanks for sharing and cool to know where you’re talking about with these things! I actually expected rubbish to be much worse, but I went much earlier in the season and I did wonder what it would like like by the end. I saw tissue yes, but not much plastic at all – which was heartening. Sorry to hear that you didn’t have the same experience :(

      Reply
  6. livinglightlyinireland
    livinglightlyinireland says:

    Loved your post. We went to Madrid on a holiday this year and tried to be as Zero Waste as possible. We failed miserably most of the time but it gave an added dimension to the trip and really helped me get a better insight into Spanish culture than i would have done had I just been frequenting the tourist spots.

    Reply
  7. Debi
    Debi says:

    Hello, my friend!

    I love this post, and I enjoyed walking the Camino with you!❤️

    Thank you, for the use of your reusable food wrap for the dates I had leftover with nary a container to transport them in. You were a life saver that day, an inspiration along the way, and – dare I say – the envy of all when you pulled an avacado from your pack to make a sandwich!

    Big hugs and ‘Buen Camino!’

    Reply
    • Lindsay (Treading My Own Path)
      Lindsay (Treading My Own Path) says:

      Tee hee (and hello) Debi! Ah yes, my sandwich wrap, which I forgot to mention in my packing list – but yes, it was useful more than once! I actually nearly put that pic of me making that avocado sandwich whilst everybody stared (I like to think it was envy and not because they thought I had a screw loose) in this post, but I resisted. Next Camino there will be MORE avocado, for sure! And falafel ;) 2020, yes?!

      Reply
  8. Anna
    Anna says:

    Great read of a great adventure. I don’t much like jam either but, having travelled in far flung places, I remember well the pleasure of ‘treats’ that I would not normally have looked twice at. Maybe your blog will bring us a step closer to individual jam containers at least made of recycled and recyclable plastic.

    Reply
  9. Carolina
    Carolina says:

    Hi Lindsay,

    I meant to reply when you first published this article. I am not familiar with northern Spain, as my family is from southern Spain. But in the south, most people like to eat tomato with olive oil on their morning tostadas ( toasted day old bread). My kids like it with jamon or chorizo. In Spain, where you can practically buy local cheese anywhere, I would probably eat it with a little olive oil and cheese, but I can tolerate cheese. Those little jam packages are extremely wasteful, but had you gone to any market, I am sure that some artisan would have sold you a local alternative…local honey, jam, hot chocolate (to dunk your day old bread, yes it is a thing)….It is hard to think of alternatives when you are in the grind, but remember most of Spain is still living as their great grandparents did, at least outside of the citie, with little plastic or trash. Keep writing and motivating us. Love your work!

    Reply
  10. S osaka
    S osaka says:

    Thank you for your article! I’m thinking of going next year in april. The weight of your pack was impressively light. I’m putting avocados on my list even though I’m not vegetarian. Thanks for inspiring us all! You rock!

    Reply
  11. Hoarder Comes Clean
    Hoarder Comes Clean says:

    I think you did a fantastic job of avoiding waste when possible and ‘coping’ when it wasn’t. I was impressed, on a recent trip to Vienna, with the little containers of sauce that one of the little places selling wraps and frites used — they looked like tiny ice cream cones, but square — edible containers!

    Reply
    • Lindsay (Treading My Own Path)
      Lindsay (Treading My Own Path) says:

      Hi Sandy and so good to hear from you! Thanks for the kind words. It is funny that little tiny things like sauce containers cause so much stress! That’s really interesting, I haven’t seen those before. I wonder how many get eaten and how many get chucked? But at least they will break down eventually, unlike the plastic ones…

      Reply
  12. Heather
    Heather says:

    Hi Lindsay, I am walking the Camino again this spring and I am wondering how the soap nuts worked for your laundry. Did 4 last you for the entire trip? And how did you store them on a day to day basis? On my Camino in 2017 I used Dizolve Eco Strips but they are expensive. At home I do laundry with a liquid I make from soap nuts and water (just because I hate undoing the little bags haha) Thanks, Heather

    Reply
    • Lindsay (Treading My Own Path)
      Lindsay (Treading My Own Path) says:

      Hi Heather! I took them for places where there wasn’t detergent to use – most of the hostels will supply laundry powder. In the end I just used them for a couple of places where there was a machine but no powder, or the powder was individually wrapped tablets. Some places also provided solid laundry bar soap. So it was useful but I could have managed without. Hope that helps!

      Reply
  13. Melanie
    Melanie says:

    Love this post Lindsay! Thanks so much for sharing. Amazing how you still kept low waste for the trek, thanks for being so honest with what you couldn’t avoid – damn those jam portions!! Also very interesting about the diet options. Love your avocado tips ;) I’m hoping to do this trek next year and was wondering if you still had the post somewhere about what you packed? I can’t find it on Instagram or your blog. I love that you kept everything under 6kgs, that’s my goal as well!

    Reply

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