Mini toiletries look to be going the way of the straw and the plastic bag. California, New York and Washington state legally banned them in hotels; and other states, as well as the European Union, are moving to do the same.

“The main issue here is single-use plastic,” said Paloma Zapata, CEO, Sustainable Travel International, which promotes conservation and economic development within tourism. In the many hotels that still offer minis, they aren’t effectively sorted and recycled. Plenty of communities around the world don’t have the infrastructure to do so, either. The kicker: It takes decades for those little bottles to decompose.

The extent of the problem hit home for sustainable travel expert Jo Hendrickx while auditing a turtle sanctuary and finding food served in single-use plastic — the very thing the sanctuary was designed to protect the turtles from. This sparked Hendrickx to start the Travel Without Plastic consultancy group, working with tour operators, airlines, cruise lines and other tourism businesses to eliminate plastics from their business model. She considers mini toiletries “low-hanging fruit,” meaning one of the easier steps to take toward plastic eradication for her clients and independent travelers, too.

Following are some tactics the experts shared for avoiding mini toiletries and the waste associated with them.

Refill Existing Minis
Hotel minis from a previous trip work, as do those of your favorite brand or a purchased generic travel set. The point is to keep reusing them. Look for wide mouths (easier for refilling) and solid seals (to head off leakage).

Stick with Solids
Experiment with toiletries in solid form, like shampoo bars and toothpaste tablets. Zapata keeps hers in a travel-ready twist-tight tin. Bonus: More room in your TSA-friendly, clear, quart-sized bag.

Skip the Soap
You know the plastic packaging on hotel bar soap? When Hendrickx audited a group of 17 small U.S. hotels, she found they generated nearly three-quarters of a million of them in a year. Consider that inspiration to make your own favorite option, solid or liquid, a must-pack staple.

Take It with You
If you do end up reaching for the hotel’s minis or plastic-wrapped bar soap, especially if you’re in a country without a strong recycling infrastructure, bring it home, use it up, then reuse or recycle what you can. Think of it this way: You don’t want to leave anything in your wake that will be there for decades upon decades longer than you.