In the kitchen
✔️ We recycle everything we can; this includes milk cartons, food tins, unwanted jars, cardboard packaging and boxes, and plastic food containers like cracker trays (unfortunately meat trays can’t be recycled due to contamination)
✔️ We use our own reusable drink bottles with filtered water and don’t buy bottled water
✔️ NO paper towel or serviettes - we use my washable Non-paper towel roll for any spills, wiping, cleaning, we even use it in the fridge in the veg tray to keep the veggies fresh by placing it in containers with groups of veg
✔️ No one-time plastics like sandwich bags or cling wrap: instead we use glass containers with lids and re-use glass jars. Instead of buying yogurt pouches we use reusable Sinchies pouches and we use my washable wetbags to replace ziplock bags
✔️ We recycle ALL soft plastics (chip packets, chocolate bar wrappers, cereal bags, pasta bags, breadbags ect) with a local program called 'Curby The Bilby'. We are fortunate they collect our bag of bags through our yellow recycle bin
✔️ We compost all of our food scraps which saves so much waste! I'm not even any good at using my compost... I just let it biodegrade in the compost bin and occasionally sprinkle some on the garden bed when i want some new tomatoes or pumpkins that grow out of the compost itself.
In the rest of the home
✔️ A great switch that I am loving is shampoo bars instead of bottled shampoo. This took a while to adjust to, but was a super simple switch for my boys. I've written a blog post on this too: here
✔️ I've switched to a ‘safety razor’ which has removable and recyclable blades instead of plastic shavers.
✔️ Instead of cotton pads, we use my washable face pads
✔️ We use cloth nappies and cloth wipes and this saves a great deal of space in our bin
✔️ I use reusable sanitary pads, which are definitely not as scary as they sound i promise! You can read about them here
✔️ Cloth toilet paper - AKA 'Family Cloth', is a new change for me. It was inspired by the Covid pandemic. I am the only girl in my home so I use these just for me, and only for no 1s...
✔️ I cut up any natural fabric scraps and put them in the compost
✔️ Larger off-cuts are made into other products and I've recently added these to my product range called 'Scrap Busters'
✔️ Smaller offcuts that can't be made into something else go to daycare for craft
✔️ When it comes to packaging my products; I use either recyclable, reusable, or compostable packaging
This may seem overwhelming, but it didn’t happen overnight. These changes were a gradual process over 6 years, and all started with 1 change. A small seed will grow into a large plant over time, so you could try picking 1 change and see if it inspires you to make more changes as you adapt
I hope these suggestions were helpful, and can be useful to you on your less-waste journey
3 comments
Such an amazing difference with loads of great tips and switch options. Well done, very motivating and we definitely need more of you
Aww I love this, some great little tip lisa for some simply changes. Love it and thank you for sharing x
Great ways to reduce the garbage in the home. I really need to focus on the less packaging swaps. And I notice if I get a box of soft drink cans then my recycling is alway very full.