Booked your holidays for 2025 yet? Soon airlines will be flogging flights to everywhere from Cardiff to Krakow in their January sales. Flying is one of the most polluting activities that we do and the reality is that we are going to have to wean ourselves off it.
The climate cost of flying isn’t factored into the ticket price right now, so we are not really asked to think about, or pay for, the environmental damage it’s doing. Some 26 per cent of trips from Dublin Airport are for three nights or less; nearly 40 million people used Irish airports in 2023.
Until we can wean ourselves off flying, or are forced to, we can at least examine how we travel. Eschewing polluting and expensive miniature travel toiletries is one small change we can make to how we holiday.
You might have nabbed a bargain plane seat, but adding a check-in bag to your ticket can double the price. The budget conscious among us will be determined to squeeze everything we need for that weekend break to a Baltic state into a carry-on bag.
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Security restrictions mean each item of liquid in your bag must be in a container of no more than 100ml. All of these 100ml bottles then need to fit into a single, transparent, resealable plastic bag of no more than 20cm by 20cm, according to the rules of budget airline Ryanair.
You will probably want to bring toothpaste and deodorant at a minimum. A travel companion will certainly appreciate it if you do. Those with more expansive grooming routines may be adding shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, moisturiser, body lotion, shaving gel, make-up, hair gel, perfume or aftershave too. So what are you to do?
Spotting an opportunity to sell more stuff, cosmetic companies stepped in and invented a category called ‘travel toiletries’. This way, they can sell you the same product, in smaller amounts and charge double, sometimes triple the price. A pre-holiday supermarket or pharmacy trip to buy miniature cosmetics is something many now feel they need to do. But there’s a cost to the environment and to your pocket.
Take the popular Aussie brand shampoo. The full-size 300ml bottle from Boots is €7.49, or €25 a litre. The miniature 90ml travel size, containing three times less shampoo, is €3.49 or €38.80 per litre. That’s a €13.80 difference in price.
And you’ll get just three or four hair washes out of a miniature bottle before having to dispose of the plastic.
[ I fly too much and I feel guilty about it, but I keep doing itOpens in new window ]
A regular size tube of Colgate Total Original toothpaste costs €3.99. You’ll pay €2.29 for the 20ml travel size, which contains six times less toothpaste.
You can save money and help save the planet by doing things differently. If you prefer to take liquid toiletries, use a refillable container to decant from your own full size version to save money and waste. These can be reused again and again. A refillable BPA-free silicone container is preferable to plastic.
Alternatively, you could take a solid soap, shampoo, conditioner and deodorant bar, which work out a lot cheaper than travel toiletries and come with little or no plastic packaging. Why not switch to these at home too? You can buy 125 Eco Living brand toothpaste tablets in plastic-free packaging for €6.75 – that’s more than 60 days of toothbrushing, far more that you’ll get from a travel tube.
You are paying for more plastic and less product with travel miniatures. You are flying in plastic to be disposed of at your holiday destination, too. Some places won’t have a sophisticated recycling system.
Until you cut back on air travel, cut back on the unnecessary plastic that can come with it.