As a tour director I often find myself in a different hotel every night. Being a minimalist, I struggle with the waste generated by such frequent room turnover. In an effort to reduce my footprint, I’ve incorporated several habits to minimize my impact on our finite resources.

Use only one bed

There are often two beds in the room, and I am careful not to disturb one of them for fear the cleaning crew will strip the whole thing. I do, however, remove the extra pillows from the bed I will be using. These days there can be as many as 6 pillows on a bed. Since I only need the one, I place all the extras on the second bed, being careful to make sure they appear unused.

Bring your own towel

Next comes the bathroom. To reduce the resources used in cleaning towels, I bring a small towel from home which I use for my entire stay. At home, I only wash my towel once a week so I certainly don’t need it done more frequently while traveling. The only linen provided by the hotel that I may use is the washcloth to wipe down surfaces.

Reduce chemicals and cleaning

I don’t take a shower every day at home so I rarely do so on tour. I may do a quick rinse off in the tub, and when I’m finished, I dry the tub with the hotel wash cloth as it’s hardly dirty enough to require the housekeeper to use chemicals to scour it.

The other chemicals I avoid using are the soaps and shampoos provided by the hotels. I bring both my own soap and shampoo as I’d rather use my own brands, and it reduces the plastic waste since I refill my travel size containers when I’m home.

Bring your own trash bag

Another way I am able to reduce plastic use during my hotel stays is to bring my own trash bag. I hate the idea of wasting a whole trash bag for one item I may throw in there, so I simply fill my own bag and empty it into a bigger trash can at the hotel when I leave.

Separate toilet paper sheets to double use

Finally, I reduce the amount of toilet paper I use by separating the two-ply into one-ply during the length of my stay. Okay, I’m just kidding on this one. I never understand places that use single ply toilet paper, and I always double and triple it up when they do. So, the news for those who are trying to save money by only providing single play: it doesn’t work!

Hang your Do Not Disturb sign on the door

The one thing that can undermine all my efforts is the daily housekeeping. Even when I follow the instructions on the placards about hanging my towel if it doesn’t need to be washed, there are many times I find well meaning hotel staff replace it with a laundered one anyway. To minimize this problem, I keep the “Do not disturb” sign on my door for any multiple night stays.

Reducing waste at the hotel breakfast

All these methods help to reduce the environmental impact of my stay, but the hotel breakfast can present new challenges. I have invested in a foldable titanium spork that I use at places which only offer plastic cutlery. I also carry two tumblers; one I use for coffee and the other for tea in an effort to reduce my use of styrofoam and plastic cups. I also bring a rectangular Tupperware I can put my food in instead of a single use plate. It also makes a great place to store any leftovers for later.

Though I must frequently confuse the hotel staff as to whether the room has been occupied at all, I feel better about the bigger impact of my spending only a single evening in a hotel room night after night. I realize these may seem extreme measures by today’s standards, but I know from talking to people who grew up in the depression that this was once an American standard. There’s no need to waste just because we can. It’s one of the ways in which so many people today are struggling to get by on what is plenty.