Eco-friendly camping: what's actually worth packing

Castile soap is the reason people have camped with a single bar for a century. It is made from plant oils with nothing petroleum-based in it, so it lathers in cold water, rinses clean, and breaks down in soil instead of sitting there.

Take the bar if you are counting grams — nothing to leak, nothing to decant. Take the liquid if you want one bottle doing hands, dishes and a rinse-off, and you do not mind the weight.

A shampoo bar is the easiest swap on this list to justify: no bottle, no water weight, and nothing that can burst in a pack. A bar lasts roughly as long as two bottles and weighs about as much as a deck of cards.

Pair it with a conditioner bar or your hair will feel stripped by day three — bars clean more thoroughly than bottled shampoo, which is the point and also the catch.

Toothpaste tablets are the one camping swap that is simply better than the thing it replaces. You chew one, it turns to paste, and you brush. Nothing freezes, nothing bursts at altitude, and there is no half-used tube weeping into your wash bag.

They also solve the flying problem — no liquid, so nothing to declare and nothing to lose at security.

A cloth filter is the quiet upgrade here. Paper filters go soggy in a damp pack and you have to carry the used ones out; a cotton one rinses, dries on the outside of your bag, and lasts a year of weekends.

An insulated flask earns its weight on a cold morning and a hot afternoon in the same trip.

A spork is a joke until you have washed one item instead of three. Beeswax wrap is the genuinely useful one though: it replaces foil and cling film for sandwiches, half an onion and a block of cheese, and it moulds shut with the warmth of your hands.

One caveat worth knowing before you buy — beeswax wrap is not for raw meat, and it does not like hot food or hot water.

Used toilet paper does not biodegrade quickly in dry or cold ground, which is why every alpine trail is dotted with it. A pee cloth is the fix: an absorbent panel that clips to the outside of your pack, dries as you walk, and has an antimicrobial side so it does not smell.

Rinse it when you get to water, wash it with everything else when you get home. It is the single most useful thing on this page and the one almost nobody thinks to bring.