Reducing Your Household Waste

When you hear zero waste, you probably roll your eyes and think to yourself “well that’s not possible” and go about your day right? Well, while ZERO waste isn’t possible for a lot of us, we CAN work to reduce our waste. It’s a lot easier than you may think. Buying the right products and making some very small changes can make a huge impact in the long run.

Single Use Plastic Bags

We all have trash. Throwing it away requires trash bags. What if, instead of tossing your garbage into something that’s NOT biodegradable you use a bag that will allow your trash to compost as well as possible. Green Paper Products offers household trash bags that are toxin free, made of corn and 100% biodegradable. This is a change you can make without any impact on your daily routine and it’s a huge impact for the Earth!

Composting

I started composting this past year. I’d wanted to for a long time but assumed, incorrectly, that it was difficult and I never started. All I had to do? Add a small compost bin on my counter top….I throw in scraps as I create them. The bin in stainless steel so it’s super easy to clean and doesn’t hold odors. I have a larger compost bin outside (I bought a rotating one on Amazon), and I dump the week’s scraps in there, give it a spin and repeat the process. Within a month, my scraps were turning into soil….so easy and I’m avoiding putting things in the landfill!

Plastic Wrap

When I started to look at getting rid of single use plastic in my home, I was really curious as to how I was going to replace plastic wrap. I started to do some research and I was shocked and happy to find out that there are a number of options available. I settled on silicone covers. These covers are available in a variety of sizes and they are, of course, reusable. I love that they can fit a variety of sizes and stretch to cover not only bowls and plates, but objects like fruits and cans if necessary. They are super fast to use and a perfect solution to never reaching for plastic wrap again. Amazon has variety packs in a seemingly endless number of options of colors, sizes and even shapes.

Soap

Soap doesn’t SEEM like it should be an environmental challenge does it? However, the single use plastic that your soap arrives in is a huge challenge. Traditional liquid laundry detergents are usually packaged in high density polyethylene (HDPE plastic jugs). A shocking 68% of these bottles are not recycled, and contribute to the approximately 275 metric tons of plastic waste generated on land that goes into our oceans and waterways annually. Dropps comes in cardboard, which is easily recyclable. And if you’re wondering if you have to sacrifice function for saving the Earth, you don’t. These detergents smell and work AMAZING.