How To Choose Eco-Friendly Travel Gear
Written for Earth Day, and the sentiment was right. What has become much clearer in the years since is which decisions actually matter, because the numbers are now well established and they are not evenly distributed.
The biggest thing you can do about gear is not buy it. Manufacturing dominates the footprint of almost every piece of kit, usually by a wide margin over its whole life in use. So repairing a ten-year-old pack beats buying a new one made from recycled fabric, every time. This is the one rule that outranks everything else in this post.
Which is why the repair schemes matter more than the materials. Patagonia's Worn Wear, Osprey's all-mighty guarantee and similar programmes from most serious brands will fix or replace gear regardless of age. Using them is the single most effective green choice in the category, and it is free.
What to look for when you genuinely do need something new:
- Durability and repairability over recycled content. A thing that lasts fifteen years beats a recycled thing that lasts three.
- Recycled fabrics, now standard rather than remarkable, which means they are no longer a reason to pay a premium.
- PFAS-free water repellency, which is the substantive chemistry change since this was written and is now regulated in several markets. It wears out faster, so learn to reproof.
- Certified down, to the Responsible Down Standard or equivalent, which costs nothing extra to choose.
And the honest proportion, which a gear post is reluctant to state: one long-haul return flight outweighs every gear decision you will make in a year. Fewer, longer trips and the train where geography allows are where the real reduction lives.