Be a Dirtbag, Save the Planet : 20 Tips for Eco Friendly Vanlife
Since moving into our self-converted camper van, we’ve found ourselves spending our days and night almost exclusively in natural areas all across the western United States. We love nature and we love everything the planet provides for us, but sometimes, we can’t help but feel like we’re taking more than we give back.
So we asked ourselves, is vanlife sustainable?
Well, on one hand, we’re driving around a giant white beast that is the epitome of gas guzzler. While we try to walk as much as possible once in a town, we moved into the van in order to travel and see new places, so driving it is a non-negotiable. That’s just reality of having a vehicle that’s also your house: it’s going to be heavy and you’re going to have to drive it.
On the other hand, our house in wheels still has a far smaller carbon footprint than even a modest modern apartment. But we’re not interested in being the lesser of two evils. We want to minimize our environmental impact as much as possible!
So, how to make vanlife more sustainable? Fortunately, there are tons of little habits and conscious choices we can all make to start down the road toward sustainable vanlife.
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Navigation for Sustainable Vanlife Tips
1. Open your mind to the zero waste philosophy.
What is zero waste? Lately, it’s become a bit of a buzzword that gets hyped up and tossed around a lot without much understanding as to what it actually refers.
Zero waste is simply an ethos that guides us to live less wastefully. There’s nothing scary about it which is the term’s main problem. It turns people off because it sounds like an all-or-nothing sort of deal: Well, I can’t be totally zero waste so why bother?
Going zero waste isn’t meant to be taken literally. It’s impossible to produce no waste ever! Even the most dedicated zero wasters have their little jars of plastic to serve as a reminder that waste will always plague. It’s just up to us to stop the plague from becoming a pandemic.
Are WE zero waste? Not even close. Keeping your van clean and sanitary demands way too many paper towels for that. We’re so far from being literally zero it’s not even funny. But we’re conscious about the waste we do produce and we try to reduce it in whatever ways we can. That’s the true spirit of the zero waste movement.
And to further prove that zero waste vanlife isn’t such a crazy concept, check out the musings of Irie to Aurora, who combine vanlife and zero waste a whole lot better than we do!
For more general zero waste living tips, check out my favorite zero waste website, Sustainable Jungle. They provide tons of accessible zero waste planning info and product guides. A great source of inspiration without all the doomsday environmental guilt tripping!
2. Start sustainable to stay sustainable.
This is to say, build your campervan with sustainability in mind. There are lots of sustainable van build elements you can incorporate right into the conversion process that are both safer for you and the environment.
Lots of building materials are filled with nasty chemicals and harmful particulates that can cause cancer and endocrine system disruptions in even the biggest houses. Indoor air pollution kill can cause “Sick Building Syndrome and a whole host of other health problems. Now imagine being exposed to those same chemicals but in a fraction of the space.
Insulation especially (read about different types of camper van insulation and eco friendly insulation here).
At all costs, avoid toxic fiberglass and insulate with cotton, wool/rockwool, or recycled denim batting instead. The upfront cost is a little higher but the unseen environmental costs are way lower.
We wanted to use wool batting, unfortunately did not have access to these materials living in Alaska, where shipping restrictions are pretty extreme. Regardless, fiberglass has no place in our van.
Beyond insulation, use non-toxic (preferably non-aerosol) adhesives, paints, and sealants. This is where lots of your chemicals come into play. While non toxic options do exist they’re harder to find at most major hardware stores. If you can, choose non-lead, non-VOC paints. Valspar makes a non-VOC line of paints available at Lowe’s.
Seal your wood and paint with Safecoat Hardseal.
For god’s sake, avoid PVC at all costs. PVC is the single biggest environmentally tragic material that exists and there is literally no safe way to dispose of it. Read more in Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff for all the dangers of PVC. Unfortunately, it’s present in a lot of building materials, from pipes to paints. Read your ingredients and try as much as possible to keep your van PVC-free.
Other things you can do to make your vanbuild more sustainable is to use reclaimed lumber or other recycled materials for your van conversion. Here are some great places to find these:
Habit for Humanity ReStore: Tons of communities have these and they’re filled with everything from lumber and cabinets to toilets and mirrors, all reclaimed from demolitions and housing remodels. It can be a little hit or miss finding anything of quality, but the price is right!
Craigslist, Facebook marketplace, and other online community sale sights: People sell and give away building materials all the time on these sights. It’s not uncommon to end a construction project with tons of scrap you would honestly pay someone to take off your hands (at least, that’s how we felt at the end of our build). If you can’t find any being advertised, put out a “wanted” or “in search of” ad.
Freecycle.com: Similar to the above bit specifically for free items being given away. Just type in your town or city and see what people are trying to get rid of.
Dumpster dive: Okay before you stop reading and write us off as gross weirdos, bear with us. We’re not suggesting you put on a snorkel mask and plunge head first into green box at the end of the alley. Dumpster diving doesn’t have to be gross, and we in no way endorse risking exposing yourself to something harmful and flesh eating. But ever stopped at the county dump and saw a perfectly good table sitting beside the dumpster? It happens all the time, especially at apartment complexes where people are downsizing to move almost constantly.
Full disclosure: we partially furnished out first apartment in Alaska this way. Just swing by the dump every once in a while and see what good quality salvage can be accessed (preferably without exposing yourself to used needles and crack pipes).
Buy ethical/sustainable decor and furniture: If you’re buying prefabbed furniture (like cabinets and counters) be sure to buy sustainable made pieces (our of responsibly sourced, durable wood or reclaimed materials. While IKEA certainly doesn’t qualify as that, you can find tons of great reclaimed and ethically made furnishings at both Made Trade and Etsy Reclaimed.
And remember to take it easy on yourself if you have to buy something less than sustainable. There’s really only so much of a degree that you maintain environmental ethical when it comes to building materials, but that just means you should really try to take advantage of the areas where you can build green. For the others, just try to make sure they last you a long time.
Need inspiration? Check out both this video, this one, and this one for tours of some sustainable van conversions.
3. Buy groceries in bulk.
The biggest way to reduce waste while living in a van is to start buying what you can in bulk. While there are lots of small things you go do to heat your tiny cooking space into a more zero waste kitchen, buying in bulk is single biggest.
Outside an environmental standpoint, buying in bulk is often cheaper, more organic, and just more efficient for vanlife. Mostly because you can get things in small amounts, rather than American-sized apocalypse prep ones.
Take laundry soap: we prefer powder because it comes in non-plastic and doesn’t leave detergent stains on clothes in cheap laundromat washers. However, boxes are powdered laundry detergent tend to be huge and would last us well over a year. We don't have the space to store a box of that size for that long. Bulk laundry powder is so much better, allowing us to bypass waste altogether and only get a few months worth at a time
Plus, when you inevitably acquire a mouse in your van (think it won’t happen to you? We did, too. Now we’ve had multiple instances), you food will be nice and mouse-proof! Cardboard boxes and bags are fodder for nice teeth. Hard plastic and glass, not so much.
We use BPA-free OXO Good Grips airtight food storage canisters that we’ve weighed, written the “tare” weight on the bottom, and take to the bulk store. Even though they’re plastic in and of themselves, they prevent a lot MORE plastic from hitting the landfill. For a true zero wast lifestyle, glass is idea, bit it’s just too breakable and heavy for vanlife. Not to mention round jars are huge space eaters and a bitch to utilize cabinet space efficiently.
If you’re not familiar with how bulk shopping really works, just make sure you’ve weighed your containers prior to going shopping. We write the weight on the bottom in Sharpie so the cashier has the TARE weight, which they can just subtract from the total weight.
Not that we’re not totally zero waste with our grocery shopping. I love the occasional box of Special K cereal as much as the next person. Plus, we do find ourselves in areas quite frequently where there simply are no bulk options to be had, and naturally we still need to eat in those places. To minimize those instances, plan ahead when moving from place to place. If there’s a bulk option along the way, pick up some things, even you’re not necessarily 100% out yet. A little foresight goes a long way in waste reduction.
4. Compost your food scraps.
Organic waste, of waste of biological origin (i.e. food scraps, paper products, lumber, cotton, etc.) accounts for a staggering amount of landfill waste. STATS from article.
The saddest thing about those numbers is that they’re entirely preventable. If we just composted all those organic items instead, we could reduce landfill inputs by about 50%, according to the EPA’s Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) report.
But we’re not here to lecture you in depth on the many benefits of composting (but if you are interested, read this article). We’re here to suggest that composting and vanlife are not mutually exclusive.
Camper van composting is tricky, no doubt. Even most indoor composers and vermicomposters won’t really fit in the confined space of a camper van.
Image courtesy of Epica.
The best thing you can do is collect your organic waste (or kitchen scraps at the very least) in a compost collection bin. Collection bins, often just a stainless steel canister with an odor blocking carbon filter, are compact and easy to store even in the smallest of vans. Think of these as pre-composters. They’re designed to start the biodegradation process but can’t actually do the heavy lifting. You still need to transfer its contents to an actual compost bin or pile.
So how do vanlifers actually compost then? Like many things in vanlife, you depend on the communities around you. Reach out to locals and see who has use for your compost. Schools, community gardens, local nurseries, municipal compost facilities, even Facebook and Craigslist(!): all options that reinforce the saying “one man’s compost is another man’s treasure”... or something like that. Almost every town has some degree of a farmers market. Troll around one to find a friendly farmer who would be happy to take your compost off your hands and put it to good use.
If you don’t have that option, you can bury some food waste. Things like coffee ground can be directly buried in soil as as healthy source of nitrogen. Just avoid doing this in the desert (alpine or otherwise) as fragile, dry environment will still be disrupted by unfamiliar additives.
5. Be conscious about water consumption.
One of the biggest boons vanlife has in the way of sustainability is its naturally tendency toward water conservation. Saving water is not only more sustainable, but lets you stay off grid for longer.
The single biggest thing you can do to reduce water use: buy a manual water pump, either foot or hand. We’ve found hand pumps to be super clunky to do dishes since you have to devote one hand just to pumping. The foot pump is clutch. We use the Whale Water Systems Gusher Galley connected to a 6-gallon BPA-free water tank (though if we could go back, we would swap this to a bigger stainless steel Fusti water tank) with beverage safe flexible tubing.
Electric pumps are not only more of a hassle install and draw more power from your battery bank, they make it easy to lose track of how much water you’re wasting. With manual pump, we only use exactly what we need. That 6-gallon stainless reel fresh tank lasts us roughly a week on average. Most people use way more than that every day. In fact, according to the USGS, the average person who lives in a house uses between 80 and 100 gallons… PER DAY!
If you don’t have a sink in your van, get a wash basin to conserve water when doing your dishes and personal hygiene tasks. Just fill it from either stored water or a nearby waterway.
Even though we have a sink in the van, we highly recommend an external package camp sink, too, for doing heavier wash tasks and laundry if necessary. The Sea to Summit 20L portable camp sink packs down into a tiny puck and yet provides a huge wash basin. We find so many uses for it.
6. Go sustainable with your suds.
Even if you’re dumping your grey water into sanctioned treated waterways, toxins from traditional soap can still leach into the earth. Biodegradable soap is a much more eco-friendly option. This includes dish soap, laundry soap, body soap, and shampoo.
Image courtesy of No Tox Life.
We personally love No Tox Life’s zero waste dish soap bar. The small size lasts forever and it’s absent any sulfates, parabens, and palm oil. Best of all, it’s multipurpose (the vanlifer’s favorite word!). You can also use it for hands, laundry (just grate it into flakes), carpet, and general surface cleaning. To make it into liquid dish soap, melt 1 oz into 8 oz of water.
With earth-safe soap in hand, you can freely wash off-grid without harming the environment.
However, please note that biodegradable soaps do not mean you can just wash directly in lakes, rivers, and other natural waterways. These ecosystems are extremely fragile and even biodegradable soaps in high concentrations can harm the living creatures that inhabit them.
Instead, dump your soapy water at least 200 feet away from any waterway.
Find EARTH SAFE DISH soap here: Amazon
7. Minimize your personal care routine.
While we’re talking about going non-toxic, you should apply to every area of your life.
Bad synthetic ingredient in personal care products are a) bad for you, and b) eventually make their way into the environment, even if you’re not directly dumping it there. Especially if you’re a big fan of swimming in rivers and streams like us! All that junk you’ve put on your body is suddenly floating around that crystal clear mountain lake.
The first step is to develop a minimalist personal care routine. Get rid of the nightmarish rainbow of plastic bottles bow the sink. No one needs four different shampoo, let alone the vanlifer. We just don’t have the space for that. What does a minimalist care routine mean?
For us, it means cutting out most things. I stopped wearing make-up. Chris stopped shaving and doing his hair. I never did anything with my hair so I never had to make that shift. Minimizing your routine doesn’t mean being quite a cold turkey as us. If you want to get glam, then do it! You do you. Just find the things you do actually want and use on a regular basis.
Don’t keep multiple products with the same use and instead try to find one product with multiple uses!
For example, simple raw coconut oil has oh so many uses. It can be used for cooking, make-up remover, moisturizer, a carrier to any essential oil, and so much more.
Another way to minimize if you’re a vanlife couple: share! None of that “his and hers” bullshit. We share everything, including deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste, and more. We even share a safety razor! Talk about shaving off tons of plastic consumption by avoiding disposable razors.
By sharing all this, we’re not only saving ourselves massive bathroom storage space, but minimizing a lot of unnecessary product packaging.
Once you’ve minimized, be conscious about choosing non-toxic, environmentally friendly products for those that remain. This means no plastic micro beads, SLS, parabens, phthalates, synthetic fragrances, palm oil (read why here), and anything that sounds scary and unfamiliar on the ingredient list. If it sounds unnatural, it probably is.
Here are some essential switches you can make to be less toxic and wasteful in your personal care products:
Plastic Free Haircare:
Try to minimize all the plastic bottle waste! Bottles are a big pain in a van anyway as they take up tons of space and can pressurize weirdly when driving at higher elevations. Instead, opt for more compact, long lasting, and eco friendly hair care bars:
Ethique natural shampoo and conditioner bars (which are vegan, cruelty-free, and palm oil free!)
Reef Safe Sunscreen:
Raw Elements 95% organic non-nano zinc oxide face+body sunscreen
Natural Toothpaste:
We use Georganics natural zero waste toothpaste, but there are so many zero waste toothpaste options out there in powder, tablet, and paste form. We’re plannong on trying toothpaste tablets once our current stock is out because they seem better for transport (like if we opt to brush our teeth in a coffee shop or gas station). Some options depending on your form preference:
David’s Recyclable Aluminum Tube Toothpaste (also available on Amazon)
Alternatively, just use a mixture of homemade baking soda and peroxide! But don’t forget to use a bamboo biodegradable toothbrush (though the bristled likely won’t be compostable so you’ll need to remove them before composting).
Aluminum-free Deodorant:
For a paste zero waste deodorant: Meow Meow Tweet or Elevated Pits
For a cardboard stick zero waste deodorant: Pit Stop
If you’re just now switching to natural deodorant, you’ll need to detox first. No Tox’s Life detox bar helps speed up the process.
Natural Skin Care:
Of all our personal care products, our skin care selection is the most gratuitous. And not because we use any facial products and the like (we’re au naturale when it comes to that). Because we’re rock climbers, skin care for our hands is of the utmost importance and we have a host of products specially designed to keep our skin moisturized but not soft. Even still, we aim for natural products. Joshua Tree Organic Climber Balm is by far the best. Even for non-climbers, this all-natural oil salve provides intensive treatment for dry and split skin. We pair this with Climb Skin (available on Backcountry and Amazon) for cultivating generally tough skin.
For general dryness as a product of sticking our hands in skin drying chalk all day long, we use Burt’s Bees Almond Milk hand cream. Aside from smelling dreamy, it comes packaged in a reusable glass jar.
Zero Waste Feminine Hygiene:
Amber alone talking here: I was always skeptical of the idea of a menstrual cup... until I took the plunge. Let me just say: it is LIFECHANGING. After the learning curve of taking it in and out (and a slight panic after thinking I got it stuck the first time), they’re so much easier.
No more TSS risk. No more plastic wrappers and applicators. No more sleeping in a diaper! Yes the cup even works for overnight wear! Plus, having one cup is such a space saver over having an entire stash of various sized tampons and pads.
A word of caution: be really careful about what one you choose. Lots of greenwashing when it comes to menstrual cups. The cheap made-in-China ones are cheap for a reason. Their “medical grade silicone” is somewhat suspect. We know you want to save money for all your vanlife adventures, but think about all the money you’re saving on tampons. Just spring for the extra cash on a safe and reliable cup.
The most reliable brands currently in the market are:
The original Diva Cup (tried and true with lots of reliable reviews)
Saalt Cup (which also provides a cup to women in need for every purchase)
Pixie Cup (the cheapest and best for smaller ladies like myself; they also donate cups to women in need).
Lunette Cup (easy to pull out, good for smaller ladies, and available away from Amazon if you don’t support the company)
For light days, either a reusable period pad or “period panties” are the way to go (though you’ll want to do a load of laundry not too long after flo flees if using these).
Sustainable periods: who would have thought?!
For tons more recommendations about non-toxic, sustainable beauty and personal care products, check out some of Sustainable Jungle’s many zero waste beauty brand lists.
8. Flush away toilet waste.
Embrace the water-free pee! Toilets are so freaking wasteful it isn’t even funny, even the supposedly “water saving toilets”. The average toilet uses 5 gallons per flush, which adds up to billions of gallons of water flushed away every day, even in the U.S. alone.
Fortunately, vanlife automatically reduces all that! So take advantage of the natural push toward sustainability and try to use less actual toilets. We keep a Dometic Portable toilet in our van (which you can read the review of here). It’s fresh flush tank holds a mere 2.3 gallons, which we only ever use about half of every week. Seriously! A whole week of toilet usage uses less water than one single flush of the average toilet. And since we’ve recently gotten into the habit of using our sink’s grey water to rinse out the toilet’s black tank when we dump, we use minimal water even in the dumping process.
Even if you don’t have an RV toilet in your campervan, you can still save water by avoiding using public flush toilets where possible. Since we spend so much time on BLM and national forest land, we end up squatting and/or using outhouses and Port-a-potties more than “real” toilets. Fun fact: Every day, global Port-a-potties actually save 125 million gallons of water from being flushed. They may not smell the greatest but that sustainability superpower will hopefully make you see them with new eyes (or a new nose).
Make sure you’re also using recycled toilet paper if you can. No, we don’t means THAT kind of recycled toilet paper, but rather that made from pre and post consumer recycled content (like spare production trimmings and office copier waste). Natural Value is easy to come by. Who Gives a Crap is an awesome recycled toilet paper maker but they only ship in bulk, which is inconvenient for the space limited vanlifer.
If the term recycled toilet paper gives you the heebie jeebies, try “tree free” bamboo toilet paper. Bamboo is a far more fats replenishing plant than the virgin tree pulp of traditional toilet paper making it a much more sustainable option. Try Pure Planet Club bamboo toilet paper.
9. Own your dirtbag-ness.
Half the fun of living in a van is being shameless about it. People will already think you’re a dirty hippie, so embrace the persona! Learn to be a little dirty.
A good way to start is by showering less. As an example, we shower fully about once a week. Sometimes we’ll wash our bodies in a lake in between but we reserve washing our hair for once a week. It’s actually not that gross and when your skin and scalp get accustomed to having their protective oily barrier wicked away, they’ll actually feel the need to produce less oil. It’s actually not healthy to shower as often as most people do. You’re not only ridding your skin of its moisture barrier and acid mantle, but also altering its pH and washing away healthy bacteria. Less showering is downright healthy.
Plus, showers can be a logical vanlife nightmare anyway (regardless of whether you have a shower in your van or use gyms/public showers), so the less often you feel the need to do it, the better for you, too
While you’re at it, do laundry less, too. Again, we only do laundry a scant once a month. That saves us tons of money at the laundromat and greatly reduced the wear and tear on your clothes. Washing and drying clothes (particularly the latter) reduces their life far more than wearing ever could (unless you make a habit of army crawling under barbed wire, that is). Even Yvon Chouinard, CEO of Patagonia and founder of 1% for the Planet recommends less washing in his book on building a sustainable business Let My People Go Surfing (please read this book). Maybe it’s the smelly climber in him talking or maybe there’s something to it.
How do we pull off doing laundry so little? It’s not like we have a walk-in closet full of clothes. Simple: we just rewear things. Treat every item in your van closet (except maybe socks and underwear) like your favorite pair of jeans; They’re just never a comfortable after a wash. Clothes can be reworn quite a few times before needing a wash. If you love the outdoors and being active, have your active outfit and causal outfit for the week so you don’t go grocery shopping smelling like you just came off a three day backpacking venture.
Finally, embrace the dirtbag tradition of scumming whatever free and cheap stuff you can. Utilize that which would otherwise be thrown away. Check out this vanlifer who actually subsides mostly in dumpster diving. It sounds gross, but if you watch the video, you’ll find it’s actually quite sane. We’re not quite that hardcore, but I’m not exactly opposed either!
We’re personally a huge proponent of the day-old section at local bakeries. We even sometimes run into cafes that give us their trash-bound baked goods at closing time. Vanlife hack: always go to places right before close for mega deals.
So what if it’s not as fresh? It’s free (or very cheap) AND reduces food waste!
10. Stop with the single use.
Hopefully you realized this was an obvious course of action long before moving into a van. In fact, living in a van actually makes switching to reusables even easier. Your car is your house. You have literally no excuse to take those plastic grocery bags because you “forgot your reusables at home”. Just walk out to the van and get them.
This is true of bags, stainless steel straws, utensils (I keep a UCO spork on my person just about constantly), water bottles (I will never stop talking about how much I love my Hydroflasks), takeout containers, and more.
If your use propane in your van, ditch the disposable 1lb. canisters. There’s no way to sustainably dispose of them or refill them. Let me rephrase that: There’s no SAFE way to refill them. I’ve done it but it’s not technically legal and it’s scary.
Unfortunately, propane hookups are notoriously tricky to deal with. Coleman stoves do their best to forcefully you to use those green devils (also made by Coleman, shockingly enough). You know that little arm that sticks out of the stove? That contains a pressure regulator, therefore making it a crucial component and impossible to replace (trust us, we tried so damn hard).
While you can’t remove the arm itself, you can replace the green canisters with an adaptor hose that connects your stove to a 20 lbs. propane tank. That you CAN refill over and over for far less money than buying single use canisters.
11. Avoid using heat and A/C.
Altering the ambient temperature of a space requires a huge amount of energy, whether derived from non-renewable gas or electricity.
Lucky for the environment, vanlifers are fair weather folk. Because no matter how well insulated a van is, no one is going to be comfortable much below freezing. Unfortunately, even in a camper van, heat and A/C aren’t very sustainable. A/C units typically run off the van own fuel system, meaning lower fuel efficiency, and more emissions. Camper van heat sources typically are either:
Propane: An okay option (as far fossil fuels go, at least) so long as you don’t use the single use propane canisters which most are set up for. You can use the same adapter hose with them as you can a stove, but it can be tricky to then safely mount the heater. We keep a Mr. Heater Little Buddy for use in emergencies only.
Electric: Less a sustainability issue and more so unreadable because of their massive power draws. Unless connected to shore power, an electric space heater will promptly zap any van battery.
Diesel: Some heaters can actually tap right into your van fuel system. The Webasto heater (among others of a similar nature) are compatible with Diesel engines only. Again, however, as with A/C, it’s decreased your vehicle fuel efficiency.
Wood: The most sustainable option for winter vanlife! A wood stove provides super dry heat (which staves off mold and condensation in your van). It’s also easy to find sustainably harvested wood to burn. The only downside is that camper van wood stoves tend to be quite expensive and tricky to install.
The sun: Better yet, avoid the need for heat altogether. Chase the blue skies and sunshine
12. Shop local.
Vanlife makes you dependable on local communities, which not only benefits the community, but the environment as a whole! If you’re buying local, you can avoid shipping emissions and just the general lack of knowing where your stuff is coming from.
This is especially true of foods. Don’t think that means just shopping at a local grocery store rather than Amazon Delivery. Granted, that is better, but you should try it source your food directly from a local community. Farmer’s markets are a great way to do this, and you can obtain things like fruits and veggies directly from those who are growing them.
Every time we shop local, we prevent an average of 1,000 driving miles of carbon emissions. When you consider we grocery at minimum once a week, that’s a lot of carbon offset!
13. Eat out less.
If you’re choosing to be more conscious about the food you buy, you should apply that consciousness to eating out as well. Keep in mind that restaurants (from dingy cafe to four diamond fine dining) are of a for profit by nature. That means they typically supply ingredients as cost effectively as possible, which is almost never from local or organic farms.
While we can choose to support seemingly ethical restaurants and locally owned ones, we still can’t ensure the food we’re getting served is from an ethical supply chain.
That’s not to say you can’t treat yourself to the nice, occasional date night at a locally owned bistro or brewery. Just treat going out as that: a treat!
Plus, eating out less is healthier and more financially conservative!
14. Buy nothing new for your vanlife closet.
Not only do my beloved bold fleeces come from Patagonia, a super sustainable outdoor clothing company, but they all came to me secondhand! The middle one is actually a child’s fleece but it fits me perfectly!
Before moving into a van, I challenged myself to buy nothing new. After a year working in a little used gear and outdoor clothing consignment shop called The Hoarding Marmot, I found a deep passion for pre-loved clothing. When I learned that about 15 millions tons of clothing waste gets each year (and that comes from an EPA 2013 study, so that number is likely higher now), it only fueled that passion further.
So we challenge you to the same thing! Write down the rules of your buying ban; yes, there are rules and there can be exceptions. For example, because climbing shoes have a definitive life and used climbing shoes just don’t perform well, I allow myself to but new climbing shoes when necessary (but only after having my old pair resoled 1-2 times). If you write down your exceptions, you won’t be as tempted to fudge the rules or cheat later on.
Thrift stores and consignment stores are an AMAZING way alt unique, quality clothes at a steal. Better yet, you’re saving some rad romper from hitting the landfill.
Maybe the grandma smell of actual thrift stores skeeves you out a bit. Maybe you’re agoraphobic. Well fortunately for you, you can still fulfill all your used clothing shopping dreams right from the comfort of your couch. Check out this list of the best online thrift stores. Patagonia Worn Wear and the REI used gear stores are our faves. Plus, these are a great way to sell your old clothes to minimize for vanlife.
Clothes are the easiest place to implement a ‘buy nothing new’ rule, but by all means, apply it to other areas of your life! Thrift stores are great for all manner of things, from kitchenware to kitschy van decorations.
If you can’t what you need used, buy it from a sustainable brand. There are actually a ton of sustainable outdoor clothing brands out there these days making clothing from eco friendly materials through fair labor practices.
It boils down to becoming a more conscious consumer. Put in the effort to find something that already exists to fulfill your needs rather than demand something new be made with the click of your mouse.
Take up the mantle of responsibility and WWII mentality: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. For further inspiration to resist the “fast fashion” movement, watch The True Cost.
15. Live slow, drive slow.
It’s no secret that both vanlife and the slow living movement share quite a few similarities in motivation and ethos. Enjoy life. Cut out the distractions. Break away from the wake-work-repeat routine to truly experience life at its most simple.
So why are we always in such a hurry to get places?
If you do nothing else to strive for greater camper van sustainability, just make a point to let off the gas a little.
For every 5 mph you drive over 60 mph, a car’s gas mileage decreases by 7%. Now consider average interstate speed limits are 75 mph-80 mph: 7% loss exponentially four times is a lot of fuel efficiency loss. And since fuel efficiency is linked to your vehicle’s emissions, both you and the planet will pay at the pump.
This is especially important for diesel camper vans, because diesel engines produce about 13% more greenhouse gas emissions per gallon than regular vas engines (10,180 grams of CO2 per gallon vs. 8,887 grams, according to the EPA).
So take it easy. Don’t drive dangerously slow and impede traffic, but it you’re out on the open highway, slow it to 60 mph. Use cruise control to regulate gas flow to the engine. Learn how your car’s gears work (yes, even automatic transmissions have gears) and learn when to shift into lower gears to ease up how hard your engine has to work. Try not to gas harder than necessary and coast as much as possible. All these are little ways to develop more sustainable driving habits.
Stop timing how long it takes to get from point A to point B. Life happens on the drive anyway.
16. Avoid putting things on your roof.
Another thing that will absolutely WRECK your gas mileage is a roof rack, or any large external upfitting that will mess with the aerodynamics of the vehicle. Even a few steel bars that seem light and small enough sticking up a foot from the roof matter a surprising amount. A friend of ours lost an average of 3mpg just by putting a rack (and a bike) on her short wheelbase Sprinter. Three whole miles per gallon!
Fear not, your vent fan isn’l large or heavy enough to make any degree of difference (though a large A/C may be enough to know off a gallon or two). Even crossbars alone provide hardly enough wind resistance to make a difference. It’s when we start talking full steel racks and roof boxes that we see gas guzzling.
Regardless of size, avoid anything excessively weighty on your roof where it’ll also create a higher center of mass while driving (less maneuverable and more prone to rolling).
While our lack of crossbars and roof rack was less a matter of this consideration and more a matter of “we lived in Alaska and it was somewhere between impossible and monetarily unobtainable to procure upfitting materials and qualified installers”, are so glad we didn’t end up with a roof rack as we initially imagined.
Plus, it just adds to the stealthy appearance of our van wheel all is closed up. That comes in handy when breaking out our urban vanlife skillset.
If you DO NEED the external storage, go for a streamlined roof cargo box, like the Thule Force XT, which is designed to minimize wind drag as much as possible.
17. Pave the road to renewable energy.
Now that we’ve just established that you shouldn’t put extra stuff on your roof, we’re telling you to put a solar panel up there! Contradictory? Not really. Properly installed panels are so slim and flat that they barely mess with the aerodynamics of the van.
Instead, even a small 300 watt solar panel can easily make all your power need completely renewable!
A full solar setup like ours can cost a lot and we know that not every vanlifer is in the position to spend that kind of cash up front. However, there are plenty of wallet-friendly affordable solar panel setups to fit any vanlifer budget. Sustainable power need not have an unattainable price tag.
There are essentially three major components to a basic solar setup for a campervan:
Rugged, durable, and rigid, the Boulder 50 Solar Panel pairs perfectly with the Goal Ze... [More]
Solar panels: You can either use permanent mounted ones on your roof, or a briefcase folding portable panel to set up and take down as you please, like the GoalZero’s Boulder series.
Battery bank: The most expensive component but obviously an important one. Solar power doesn’t do much good if you don’t have a place to store it! You can do what we did and go full on vehicle battery (technically ours are AGM golf cart batteries). Smaller and most cost effective options are the GoalZero Sherpa 100 AC power bank and GoalZero Yeti-Series power banks. The latter is actually a full all-in-one electric system complete with generator capability, A/C power inverter, and A/C or D/C power bank.
Goal Zero also sells both bundled kits of solar panels and power banks for a more powerful setup.
Solar charge controller: The glue that holds the whole system together and tells your panels to charge your battery.
Optional power inverter: Inverters are needed to convert a D/C power circuit (think the cigarette plug of your van) into an A/C circuit, which is what most major appliances and computers have to run off. If you have Mac, specifically, there is no way to charge it without some form of converted A/C power. You can get different strength inverters (measured in wattage) based on how powerful of a black energy draw you’ll be placing on it. Charging a laptop, running lights, and watching TV = small draw. Heating an induction cooktop, running an electric heater, and vacuuming = big draw.
If a full solar setup of any kind is still beyond your budget, go solar in small ways, like switching to solar lights. Check out the MPOWERED Luci inflatable light and Luci solar string lights. You can also charge smaller devices using a portable solar panel such as the GoalZero’s Nomad-series.
Another renewable energy option is to harness the power of kinetic energy by connecting your batteries to your van’s alternator. This is the device that charges your vehicle’s battery as it runs, and additional batteries can easily be linked to it to charge while your vehicle is running.
Find Goal Zero Yeti 400 all-in-one off-grid power station here: Goal Zero / Backcountry / REI / Amazon / EMS
18. Make vehicle maintenance a priority.
The third item in our trifecta of tips for van gas efficiency and emissions reduction is to keep your van running well and clean. Now we’re not mechanics so we’re not going to tell you what to look for here, but you should absolutely let an actual mechanic do so. Take your van in for routine full point inspection. Better to catch problems before they leave you broken down on the side of the road waiting for a tow truck.
This is especially true of older vans either higher mileage. Less maintenance and a clean history was the biggest reason we opted to buy our van new.
Why keep up on your camper van maintenance? Other than the obvious preservation of the health of your van, from a van sustainability perspective, it reduces your van’s emissions. If an engine isn’t running cleanly, it’s not going to be releasing anything close to clean either.
We know it’s tempting to shrug off routine replacements and push the limits on factory recommended maintenance. I did it for near on a decade. My beloved and stalwart Mortimer, the champion of a car I owned before Giovanni, had never been maintained or inspected outside general oil and fluid maintenance on my watch.
Speak of, at the very least stay up on oil changes, fluid levels, and air filter changes, which even the biggest mechanical dope (hi) can do.
We know maintenance can be really expensive, but your van’s health is one of the best investments you can make. Remember: you van is also your home. Decreasing its life in the long run out of either laziness or frugality in the moment can have dire consequences of the long term vanlifer.
19. Keep your tires aired up for highway travel.
A subset of camper van maintenance, but fortunately a much easier and less expensive one to do alone, is keeping your tires aired to proper PSI. Air level can affect your van’s mileage and performance on the highway . If tires are too low, your engine has to work harder, meaning you’ll get worse gas mileage and the environmental impact of your van is greater. Properly inflated tired up your van’s gas fuel efficiency between 0.6%-3% (which may not sound like a lot, but adds up over time).
Know what the recommended PSI range is for your vehicle (in larger rigs, or often differs front to back). Every time you get gas, make a habit of using a pocket tire gauge to double check. If one or more is looking a little low (outside normal temperature fluctuations depending on your environment), air it up. Many gas stations offer free air though some will charge per minutes (we know... charging for air is pretty ridiculous). This website can help you locate these.
Or if you don’t want to be chained to chasing free air pumps, keep a portable air compressor. We use a Kobalt 120v/12v AC/DC (meaning we can run it either off the van or our internal batteries) portable compressor and it’s honestly so worth having. Aside from keeping our van running in tip top condition, it gives us peace of mind when traveling on primitive backroads when a flat tire is always imminent and potentially stranding. It’s an essential road safety tool for vanlife.
Vanlife Pro Tip: If you’re taking your van off-road or into dirt and gravel, make sure to deflate the tires a bit to give them less chance of popping on a tire on a sharp rock. Then just re-inflate before long travel on pavement.
Leave No Trace: Dismantle rock rings and build fires responsibly.
20. Be a public land steward.
Set a good example. Don’t drive off road illegally or in fragile environments (like living cryptobiotic crusts found in desert regions). Don’t build fires where you shouldn’t. Don’t leave trash as your boondocking site. And for God’s sake, DO NOT leave your poopy anywhere other than 6” beneath the soil.
In other words, Leave No Trace.
For many, these will sound like “no duh” commandments. But unfortunately, there is still enough of the vanlife community that doesn’t see these actions as common sense and they’re ruining it for the rest of us.
For more ways you can help and support, check out The Access Fund, one of our favorite entities to support.
Before You Go…
See? There are SO MANY ways you can aim for living sustainably in a camper van.
We hope we don’t sound too preachy here. Lord knows we haven’t done every single one of these things, and we trip up A LOT. Sometimes we've been driving all day and fighting and we literally just don’t have the mental energy to remember a reusable coffee cup for that much needed gas station cup of joe to get us through the last 100 miles.
The truth is, it’s OKAY TO NOT BE 100%. Zero waste isn’t zero sum. Sustainable van living isn’t about being perfect or the best; it’s about just trying to be better. Remember, just like that last 1/8 of a tank of gas keep your van motoring a remarkably long time, a little bit of change can go a long ways.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the environmental doom and gloom happening all around us and think, “Okay but we’ve already reached critical CO2 levels in the atmosphere so what the heck does it matter if I use a plastic straw this once?” Well, if we all take those little opportunists to consciously employ better habits, we can all make a combined difference.
Vanlifers should know better than anyone that small doesn’t always mean insignificant.
**This post contains affiliate links to support the continued creation of these van life guides. This just means that if you purchase something from one of the links above, I get a small commission from the sale at no cost to you. Read more here or reach out with more questions.