Sub-title: Dilemmas of a would-be eco warrior. I try my best to be eco-friendly and choose sustainable practices but wonder if my efforts make a difference. Rather, some of my habits create their own dilemmas.

“Thanks to years of travel at other people’s expense, I have a lifetime supply of soaps, small bottles of shampoo, aromatic lotions, sewing kits and shoe mitts.” Sadly, my travel is not subsidised by others, but I can relate to Bill Bryson’s words (The Road to Little Dribbling, Penguin Random House, 2015, p.147).

One of the nice things about hotel stays is the complimentary items such as shampoos and toiletries. The range of toiletries at the Sails in the Desert (Uluru trip) was appropriately branded “Wiru”, a local Anangu word meaning “Beautiful”.

Planning for a trip to the Gold Coast where we were going to be staying in an apartment rather than a hotel, I purchased some sample size “shampoo-soap” (thanks Shampoo With a Purpose). I trialled one of the sample bars at home, and yes, it seems to be quite good, did the job. It will fit nicely into a soap container, with no potential hazard of leakages in luggage.

I duly took the “shampoo-soap” on our one-week trip to Tasmania in September, fully intending to use it, but, what’s that – more little bottles of shampoo and conditioner, why yes, thanks. I will use those. I still took the hotel freebies. Does that make me eco-unfriendly?

Then there are those small tubes of toothpaste: the only good thing about a trip to the dentist. Great toothpaste for travel. But when you get to the end of a toothpaste tube, the dilemma arises: do you struggle to get that very last skerrick of toothpaste out (“waste not want not”), or move on, we already have that next tube to be used (“life’s too short to waste time squeezing the toothpaste tube”).

The frugal, waste-not want-not approach must be somewhat embedded. I learnt about laundry around the age of 10 in preparation for boarding life in high school. Memories of the washhouse – a large room attached to the house with an external entrance, not a laundry room like today’s houses, nor a “European-style” laundry in modern apartments (a cupboard!). I remember the twin tub we had back in primary school days, and the copper in the corner for heating the washing water. I have even earlier memories of a mangle for wringing out the washing.

Nana used to collect the small pieces of the mostly used-up bathroom soap and mould them into a new bar for use in the laundry or out in the shearing shed. The old days – we were frugal rather than miserly; practising “good-house-keeping”.

These days environmentally friendly folks move away from the plastic bottle of laundry liquid back to the old days of soap flakes. And now, dissolvable strips impregnated with detergent. These seem a good idea for travel, but effective? The jury is out.

Now, face wash. I’m sure environmentalists are saying – you can just use one soap for all of this! Soap, shampoo, facewash, laundry. They’re probably right, but I do have favourites. Cetaphil for sensitive skin is good for a facewash for me. I like it so much that when in America in 2019 I saw a small bottle in the supermarket. I just had to have the cute little 2oz (59ml) bottle. Only US$2.99. Bargain. Sadly, when I lent it to my granddaughter, she didn’t realise that I really wanted the empty bottle back. So, I decided to get another online back in Australia. Sustainability points – zero. I contributed to the employment of someone in Walmart, Amazon and Australia Post, and paid about A$20 for the replacement. That’s OK, it’s only 2 flamingos!

The dilemma of creating a habit of sustainability vs. the allure of hotel freebies. In the battle of eco-friendly habits vs. all those cute little plastic bottles, I hope I get brownie (greenie?) points if I use a bottle more than once!