Sustainable Travel in Ireland

I’ve been living my sustainable life in Ireland for almost 4 years and we’ve travelled a lot on this little green Island!

Ireland, with its lush landscapes, rich history, and vibrant culture, is a traveler’s dream. Whether you’re exploring the dramatic Cliffs of Moher, savouring the warmth of traditional Irish pubs, or wandering through the enchanting streets of Dublin, the Emerald Isle has something for everyone. To keep Ireland beautiful, we can be mindful about how we use the land we are exploring. Here are some of my top tips on minimizing your environmental impact, and travelling sustainably in Ireland.

Read my recent article about sustainable international travel here!

Greener Transport Across Ireland

Ireland’s public transportation system is pretty good for making your way between big cities, and many trips are possible without a car! Trains and buses operate all over the country every day. When you arrive at your destination, opt for buses, trains, and trams, which not only reduce your carbon footprint but also allow you to relax and enjoy the stunning scenery along the way.

Another option is to take your bicycle with you! Trains have special bike-carrying spaces so that you can take your bike with you for transport once you arrive.

If you do need to drive, consider using your car as little as possible, and walking, cycling, and taking public transport to explore each spot. This is how we do most of our bigger adventures!

For a more immersive and eco-friendly experience, explore Ireland on two wheels or on foot. The country offers numerous scenic walking and cycling trails, such as the Wild Atlantic Way and the Great Western Greenway. You can rent bikes or join guided walking tours to discover hidden gems, all while reducing your environmental impact.

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Low-Waste Halloween Tips and Tricks

Halloween and autumn in general are always great fun! I love an excuse to decorate and dress up and have a few friends over. Of course, like many things, Halloween has turned into quite a wasteful celebration – with plastic spiderwebs and decorations all over the place, single-wear costumes, and a tonne of wasted pumpkins. Here are a few of the ways that I plan to make this Halloween more sustainable and low-waste in my home this year, and I’d love to hear what you are doing too!

The Treats

If you live somewhere that has a trick-or-treat scene then it can be tempting to stock up on bags of individually plastic-wrapped chocolates and sweets. Instead, here are some low-waste and recyclable options:

Freegan February 2022 Review

I have to be honest, I really hoped it would be more of a challenge to feed myself entirely on food that was diverted from waste streams. It was SUPER easy! Not only did I have plenty of food – I had choices! I shared food with my partner, friends, and random people on the internet because I had TOO MUCH free food.

That is a pretty shocking thing to be able to say and a reflection on how broken our food systems are.

On the plus side, I have loads of fun, ate plenty of delicious food, and saved myself a few hundred euros doing Freegan February.

Where did I get all my waste-diverted food from?

One of the main reasons that Freegan February was so easy this year is because of OLIO. I have written about the pros and cons of OLIO on this blog, but from the free food perspective, it is excellent. Between the 10% of my collections that I kept and the food I collected from other OLIO volunteers, I barely needed to look elsewhere. This made up at least 80% of my food in February.

Reduce Your Food Waste with these Awesome Hacks

Food waste is a massive contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. It also wastes your money! Here are some simple tricks and hacks that will help you to reduce your food waste and your carbon footprint while saving yourself a bit of cash.

Use By Dates vs Best Before Dates

Use-By dates appear on fresh, ready-to-eat and chilled foods that go off, such as fish and meat, dairy products, and unpasteurised fruit juices. They are a food safety deadline.

Food should not be eaten after this date unless it has been frozen. Freezing acts as a pause button so you can eat the food at another time. Just remember if you froze it on the use-by date, it should be defrosted in the fridge and consumed within 24 hours of defrosting.

Best-before dates are a guideline and can be treated with much more flexibility. Use your judgment—if something looks, smells, and tastes just fine – it is probably still safe and delicious many days after the best before date! 

Freegan February Challenge

The wonderful Íde Mhic Gabhann challenged me to join her in doing her “Freegan February” challenge – eating only food that was going to go to waste for a whole month! This food will be dumpster-dived, collected from neighbours or friends who are throwing it out, and found through apps like OLIO.

Íde decided to do #FreeganFebruary to raise awareness about just how much food is wasted. She has done Freegan February herself twice and is trying to get more people involved this year. Naturally, I agreed immediately.

We are hoping that with a few more people getting involved we can increase awareness even more! Food waste is such an invisible problem, so it takes dramatic actions to bring it into the spotlight.

The Rules of Freegan February

Here are the rules that I am going to try and stick to during Freegan February 2022:

1. I will buy nothing.

That is basically the only rule. No buying food – only finding it.

I will eat my three meals per day for one month from only food that was being thrown out or given away.

Olio, Food Waste, and Corporate Responsibility

So, if you have seen my Instagram recently you might have seen that I have started volunteering with a new App on the scene called Olio. I have some pretty mixed feelings about it, so here we go…

What is Olio App?

olioex.com

“OLIO connects neighbours with each other and with local businesses so surplus food can be shared, not thrown away.

This could be food nearing its sell-by date in local stores, spare home-grown vegetables, bread from your baker, or the groceries in your fridge when you go away.”

Building Community

I absolutely love the idea of building a more connected sharing community. That side of the OLIO app is fantastic. You will find that some people will regularly be sharing things near you, or collecting things from you – so you start getting to chat with them.

The humble Food Rescue-mobile!

My Low Waste Balcony Garden in Dublin

Hi friends! Have you ever noticed how much of our food comes from overseas? It’s a LOT. One of the ways that we try to reduce our food miles and plastic waste is by growing some things ourselves! We only have a balcony in our apartment, so we have started a small container garden in pots.

A few tips that we have come up with based on previous gardening experiences have stuck with us.

1. Only plant stuff you know you love to eat

This might seem obvious, but so often when you start off on your garden adventure it is easy to get overexcited and grab a whole load of seeds for everything and overwhelm yourself. You will end up with loads of stuff that you might not even want to eat, and you’ve wasted your time and growing space on it.

Produce will often all fruit or be ready in a short time – so you’ll have a glut of one thing that you may get sick of eating.

So, choose stuff you love and that you know you’ll get through, or plan to find ways to store things until you need them. Canning, pickling, freezing, etc are great ways to make the harvest last longer – but they take time.

We planted loads of tomatoes, kale, spinach, courgette, and some salad greens as our main crops. They take up well over 3/4 of our growing space. That is because we eat them almost every day.

We know that we will absolutely eat that much spinach. It is hard to find plastic-free spinach. Spinach is versatile. We love it.

Last year we planted LOADS of peas. They were great while they were young and we could eat the whole pea plus its pod, but as we got bored of them we let them stay on the vines longer and the pods became really tough. After that, we could only eat the seeds and that felt like a waste. Now, we are only growing 6 pea plants and we plan to eat them young to avoid that issue.

The *NON-AESTHETIC* Parts of Zero Waste

I love watching YouTube videos for ideas on new ways I can reduce my waste and live more sustainably, but I HATE how cutesy and unrealistically pretty some zero waste channels can be.

Recently a few of the bigger names in the community have started embracing the less aesthetically pleasing parts of zero waste living and that is so great. Shelbizleee is one of the ones I have seen who has started doing a series of these videos busting the chic-minimalist-mason-jar-vibes and having some real conversations about ugly but eco actions.

Her videos (search “the *NON-AESTHETIC* parts of zero waste…” on YouTube) have made me think about which of the things she does I also do, or should start doing.

Here is my version of that video:

Here is a list of these non-aesthetic zero waste (or low waste) swaps and habits that she mentions in her first video and whether I do them or do something else:

Chickpea, Pumpkin and Couscous Salad

Are you looking for a fun, festive, tasty plant-based salad for the holidays this year? Well, look no further!

This Moroccan-inspired dish is great as a side or a filling main. It’s got a solid amount of protein in it too, and you can serve it hot or cold.

Metal pegs? Eco-friendly products? Consumerism?

A few months ago I was approached by Bento Ninja, who are a kiwi company who import all kinds of things that are generally considered “eco-friendly products”. They have all the metal bento boxes, snack tins, metal straws, metal ice cube trays, etc, as well as the samples they sent me – metal pegs and a metal peg rack that is called a sock holder, but really you can hang anything smallish on.

I wasn’t 100% sure about accepting products for free in exchange for reviews at first. [Disclaimer – I did get these for free.] After asking around and seeing how other people who are working on increasing awareness of lower waste alternatives I decided that as long as I was still being honest in my reviews it’d be ok.