Earth-friendly Spring Cleaning in 4 Steps
There are a lot of things we could do to celebrate Earth Day, like walk/bike to work, plant more trees or grow veg in your gardens and do some cleaning in your houses.
But have you ever considered how much plastic waste your planting tools and cleaning products may produce?
Today on Earth Day, why don’t we start from cleaning, during this spring cleaning season, and give our Earth a deep green breath?
Photo by Doers on Unsplash
The first official Earth Day was recorded as on 22nd April 1970, when a massive student protest broke out against environmental deterioration, after an incident of oil spillage off the coast of Santa Barbara, California in 1969.
We can best start environmental protection right from our own houses by participating in spring cleaning: room by room, and from top to bottom.
But then a big worry comes up concerning cleaning products: are our cleaning products themselves harmful to the environment? Especially plastics, that are used in almost every product and packaging?
For this year’s Earth day, ‘Invest in Our Planet’ is the main theme.
It encourages businesses, governments and individuals to invest in environmentally-friendly working and living practices that can benefit the Earth.
Going plastic-free is undoubtedly an essential part of this ‘investment’.
Read on for some easy tips and suggestions you can start using from today!
In a previous post, we explored ‘why we should ALL go plastic-free’, the reasons for and benefits of it, and some steps to get there!
So, let’s have a Plastic-Free Spring Clean for Earth Day! Here are four easy swaps you can do right now:
Swap One:
Have you thought of refilling your cleaning products?
You can help reduce the amount of plastic waste by reusing the same container.
Photo on Spruce
UK households use over 70 million cleaning sprays every year - more than 140 million pieces of plastic.
That number sounds like a bomb, doesn’t it? But there’s always something we can do to reduce waste, without trading in our time!
According to research, buying refills for cleaning sprays could help save up to 60 million pieces of plastic a year.
Our top pick for refillables:
Spruce: Buy the bottles once and get plastic-free refills sent to your door.
Swap Two:
Give them a try: Laundry capsules, sheets and eggs.
If you are tired of constant refills of laundry detergent and the plastic bottles it comes in, this is the solution for you.
Try laundry capsules, sheets and eggs now! Because:
You could save around 40 single use plastic bottles per year if you get started now!
Laundry capsules, sheets and eggs require no measuring or guesswork at all: worry free!
Laundry eggs are especially suitable for hand washing too.
Check out our favourite eco laundry products:
Smol: Big performance, Smol price.
Swap Three:
Swap your sponge, brush and cleaning cloths for plastic-free options
It seems easy to forget that there's also plastic in sponges, brushes and cleaning cloths.
But luckily, it’s just as easy to have them replaced by plastic-free alternatives!
Here are some options:
Notimeforwaste: Less waste, more life. Removing wasteful products and habits from our everyday lives.
Photo by Viktoriia Oleinichenko on Unsplash
Swap Four:
Change your dishwasher for a block (or refill your bottle!)
Dishwashers help a lot with easing our kitchen workloads, but at the same time, it’s easy to forget that dishwasher soap contains a lot of plastic.
So now we should consider refills of dishwasher liquid, or use dishwasher blocks that are completely plastic-free – even without plastic packaging.
Here’s our top recommendation:
Homethings: let’s clean up cleaning. No more single-use plastic, no more shipping water.
Plastic-free cleaning is only the first stop of our journey.
Do you have any other plastic-free cleaning tips?
We understand you may have a million other questions about how to fight against plastic in other areas like the kitchen, bathroom, grocery shopping, eating out, etc.
More solutions are coming up, so stay with us!
Edited by Zhenni Qin