In summer, it feels good to step away from our usual routines, be spontaneous, and let a fun beach day roll right into an easy, casual dinner. Food trucks, canteens, and seasonal restaurants can make it fun and easy to treat your family to a meal.

Who doesn’t want a break from meal planning and cooking in the summer heat? Eating out can definitely take the pressure off a camping trip, road adventure, or festival experience. Convenience is attractive in summer, but with it often comes waste.

You also need to stock up on summer essentials – sunscreen, bug spray, beach snacks, etc. Most of this type of packaging isn’t recyclable.

Fortunately, we’ve got you covered with some simple local ways to enjoy a vacation mindset and still practise a zero waste summer lifestyle.

Put together a zero waste travel kit

When you grab take out or pack a grocery store deli picnic, you often end up with a pile of trash that would make anyone uneasy. Plastic straws, styrofoam containers, water bottles, napkins, tinfoil, plastic cutlery wrapped in more plastic – we’ve all been there.

I don’t know about you, but I would enjoy this so much more without a side of guilt over that landfill donation.

When you keep a zero waste travel kit in the trunk of your car, you are always prepared for a spontaneous summer meal or picnic. Here are my favourite items to keep handy:

• Reusable straws – bamboo, silicone, glass, or stainless steel.
• Cutlery – a bamboo travel set or mismatched thrift store cutlery.
• Containers of various sizes with tight fitting lids – I love the glass or plastic ones with snap lids and stainless steel tiffin containers
• Water Bottle – we never leave our house with our Klean Kanteens.
• Beeswax Wraps – one beautiful local option is Studio Bee
• Fabric snack bags
• Travel Mugs
• Mason jars with lids from Jarware or Cuppow
• Cloth Napkins
• Cloth Bags

You could even pack all of your items together in a backpack or basket along with a picnic blanket. Many of these supplies can be found locally at shops such as Shop on the Corner, Tummy to Mummy, Cilantro The Cooks Shop, and Keliza Healthy Living.

For tips on zero waste food shopping, check out this post.

Choose local eco friendly sun and skin care

We are so fortunate on the South Shore to have wonderful creative herbalists, eco-friendly products and local shops that carry green sun care products and bug sprays. Many of these are available in glass and aluminum containers. This is the most zero waste friendly option apart from making it yourself.

Mighty Oak Essentials makes a Bug-Away outdoor spray – it is all natural and smells amazing! I chatted with owner Melissa Duggan at the Etsy Made in Canada fair in May. I was pleased to learn that she is phasing out plastic spray bottles and switching to aluminum. You can pick up her products at Mahone Bay retailers The Barn and Keliza Healthy Living or on her etsy page.

Another local business Dirty Buoy makes a natural pre-sun cream that comes in a glass jar. Here Comes the Sun Cream has SPF 25-30 protection and contains nourishing, natural ingredients. It is available on their website and at the Bridgewater Farmers Market (which we featured here).

Local Farmers markets, like the hugely popular Lunenburg Farmers Market, can be great places to find natural zero waste options for summer skin care.

Leave Only Footprints

Before you leave a beach, campsite, or rest stop, why not take a few minutes to pick up some litter? (Include a trash bag in your travel kit in case you are unable to find a waste disposal and recycling bin.)

When plastic is left near the beach, it will likely end up in the ocean. According to David Suzuki, up to eight million tonnes of plastic ends up in the sea every year. Seabirds and marine animals can be fatally entangled in plastic waste. They also ingest the microplastics that end up on the sea bottom – it is starting to show up in the seafood we eat.

The best ways to protect our ocean creatures is to avoid plastic whenever we can and keep our natural spaces clean.

Have you seen this idea started by Carolina Sevilla out of Costa Rica? Five Minute Beach Clean Up is such a simple idea that has became a global movement.

On Earth Day, we cleaned up a favourite local campground and beach, and found a surprising amount of garbage – especially disposable coffee cups, water bottles, snack bags, broken toys, and plastic straws. And that was at a place with proper waste disposal available.

Zero waste doesn’t have to mean zero fun

You can have summertime fun, enjoy delicious take out, be spontaneous AND make earth friendly choices. It doesn’t have to be either-or. So many zero waste products are high quality and a worthwhile investment. And isn’t it great that local businesses offer so many options now? You can feel good about reducing waste and supporting local. What’s not to love about that?

There is one zero waste summer treat almost everyone can get behind. Ice cream in a cone!

Are you planning to spend time at the beach this summer? Maybe grab some take out? Where are your favourite South Shore spots? If you want to share 😉

Margaret Hoegg is a writer, editor, and sustainability advocate on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. She muses on food, locovorism, homesteading, and family over on her blog dulse and maple and instagram @dulseandmaple.