The Sustainable Travel Skincare Routine That Actually Works
Boat days in Serifos, Greece
Here's what nobody tells you about two months of hard travel: you will completely stop taking care of yourself somewhere around week three and not notice until you catch your reflection in an airport bathroom in Cairo.
You grab the sunscreen from the local pharmacy. You use whatever shampoo was in the tiny bottle by the sink at your hotel. You buy the cheapest thing that will fit in your quart-sized bag so you don’t get harassed by airport security.
And in that process, you stop caring about what you put on your body—and subsequently, into the ocean.
It wasn't until I talked to Christina Kuklinski, the founder of Kook and someone who spent two years living on liveaboards and diving three to four times a day, that I started thinking about this differently. Not just what those products were doing to my hair and skin, but what they were doing to every reef, river, and ocean I passed through along the way.
Up to 90% of what you put on your body ends up in the water. Not just if you swim. Just from existing. That airport sunscreen, that hotel shampoo—it all goes somewhere.
This blog is to help us all make better choices. Products that work and are actually safe, and a routine that doesn't require a checked bag or a chemistry degree.
First: A Word About Ingredients
Most of the products we grab because they’re convenient, or buy because the label says "clean," "natural," "non-toxic," "eco-friendly," and "reef safe" aren't actually doing what we think they are. The FDA doesn't regulate any of those terms. They’re just for marketing. Anyone can print any of those words on any product tomorrow with zero verification.
So before you buy anything — travel sized or otherwise — it's worth running it through a product safety checker. Three worth knowing:
Think Dirty — scan any barcode and get a color-coded breakdown of ingredients, flagging hormone disruptors, carcinogens, and allergens. It’s free, and it covers over 350,000 products.
Yuka — this app deciphers product labels and analyzes the health impact of both food products and cosmetics.
EWG Healthy Living — the Environmental Working Group rates over 120,000 personal care and food products on a scale of 1–10. Particularly strong for sunscreen.
No app is perfect or should be treated as the final word, but ten seconds of scanning before you buy beats finding out later that your "reef safe" sunscreen is anything but.
The Actual Routine
Kook’s Solar Moisturizer, their signature product
1. A Mineral SPF That Doubles as Moisturizer
The single best swap you can make for travel. One bottle, two jobs, less space in your bag.
Chemical sunscreens — the Banana Boat, Sun Bum, the sport sprays, everything in orange packaging at the airport — contain filters like oxybenzone that absorb into your bloodstream and have been linked to endocrine disruption. They also cause coral bleaching and disease in marine ecosystems. Mineral sunscreens use zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, which sit on top of the skin rather than absorbing into it, and are significantly safer for both you and the reef.
Kook Solar Moisturizer SPF 50 is the one I'm packing going forward. It's 1.7oz (TSA approved) mineral SPF 50, zero chemical filters, no white cast, and moisturizer first, so you're not layering two products when you're trying to get out the door. It’s reef safe by actual certification, not just label, B Corp certified, and vegan and cruelty free.
Use code TYPE2TRAVEL20 for 20% off your first order.
Mad Hippie’s Vitamin C Serum
2. A Face Oil for the Plane
Cabin humidity on most long-haul flights drops to 10–20%, which is drier than most deserts I frequent on my group trips. Your skin at altitude is fighting a losing battle, and cream moisturizers tend to evaporate rather than lock in hydration.
This Mad Hippie serum not only holds moisture better at altitude but it has vitamin C for brightening. Your skin will look like you’ve slept even if you haven’t. Apply it over a light hydrating layer for maximum effect on long hauls.
Mad Hippie also walks the talk on sustainability: clean plant-based formulas, sugarcane bioresin tubes, recyclable glass packaging. So it's a win for your skin and a win for the destinations you're flying toward.
Youth to the People’s Dream Mask
3. An Overnight Mask Worth Packing
If you're doing red-eyes or back-to-back travel days, this is the one that earns its spot in the bag.
The Youth to the People Superberry Hydrate + Glow Dream Mask packs hyaluronic acid, squalane, and vitamin C into an overnight formula that hydrates, brightens, and plumps while you sleep — including in a middle seat at 35,000 feet.
It’s non-greasy, so it won't wreck your pillow or your seatmate's opinion of you. It’s specifically formulated for dry and dull skin, which is exactly what happens to your face after a week of hard travel. Apply before you board, and wake up looking like you took better care of yourself than you actually did. Plus, it’s vegan, cruelty free, and packaged in recycled materials.
Kook’s Pre-Swim Hair Mask
4. A Pre-Swim Hair Treatment
This one is specifically for anyone spending time near water, an ocean, pool, hot tub, sauna—or just sweating in the sun all day.
Most hair products are aimed at post-damage repair, but that's too late. Salt water strips moisture from your hair and then leaves behind salt crystals that keep drying it out after you've left the water. UV rays break down the proteins in your hair shaft. By the time you're reaching for a deep conditioner, the damage is already done.
A wax-based pre-treatment creates a barrier before you get in—not after—and can last up to eight hours through multiple water exposures.
Kook Pre-Swim Hair Mask works on all hair types, including curly and color-treated. It's vegan, cruelty free, reef safe, and certified by Friends of the Sea and Leaping Bunny. Plus, for every jar sold, a mangrove gets planted through Sea Trees.
It also works as a styling product, a sauna treatment, and a pre-workout mask if you're someone who washes their hair after the gym anyway. Christina mentioned guy friends using it as a pomade. Use it however it works for you.
I wish I'd had this on safari on my last Kenya trip or ATVing in the Sahara Desert. My hair was absolutely toast.
Use code TYPE2TRAVEL20 for 20% off your first order.
Eco Roots Deodorant Cream
5. A Deodorant That Doesn't Come in a Plastic Tube
Most conventional deodorant is a plastic stick headed straight for a landfill. And a lot of the formulas aren't much better than the packaging — aluminum, synthetic fragrance, and ingredients that do to your body roughly what chemical sunscreen does to the reef.
EcoRoots Natural Deodorant Cream is aluminum-free, baking soda-free, and vegan — formulated for both underarms and sensitive skin without the hormone-disrupting ingredients common in conventional options. The coconut scent is light enough to not compete with anything else you're wearing. It comes in a small jar, has zero plastic packaging, and travels easily. It’s one of those swaps that sounds like a sacrifice and turns out not to be.
My favorite toiletry bag
6. A Good Organizer
None of this matters if you can't find anything in your bag. Digging through your luggage for SPF at the airport or knocking over half your products in a tiny hotel bathroom is how routines quickly fall apart on the road.
A dedicated toiletry organizer — ideally one with a hook so it hangs in any bathroom — makes the difference between a routine you actually do and one you meant to do.
Pair it with leakproof refillable bottles so you can bring your actual products instead of compromising on whatever fits TSA rules or comes in a tiny bottle at the hotel. It’s better for your skin, better for your wallet, and a lot better for the planet than single-use travel sizes that end up in a landfill.
The Bottom Line
You don't need a 12-step beauty routine to take care of yourself on the road. You need five things that actually work, fit in your bag, and don't quietly destroy the ecosystems you're traveling to see.
Start small. Swap the Target sunscreen. Scan one product on Think Dirty before your next trip. Grab a shampoo bar instead of three plastic minis. None of this requires a total overhaul, just paying a little more attention to what you're putting on your body before you walk into the ocean.
If you’re digging these recommendations, I put together a full list of everything I actually travel with — sustainable, tested, and ready to shop, right here.
Want to try it Kook for yourself? Use code TYPE2TRAVEL20 at gotkook.com for 20% off your first order — plus Christina will throw in a bonus gift with your purchase, just for our listeners.
Want to hear more about the real self-care routine for hard travel? Listen to the full episode with Christina Kuklinski of Kook — available on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Ready to see how your new beauty routine holds up? 👇🏻