Eight Ways to Reduce Household Waste

We have been working to reduce our impact on the environment by lowering our garbage output, which have included various different solutions and strategies, including different systems for reusables to make them at least as convenient as disposable products.

 We have been able to reduce the level of garbage and will continue to by using a couple of different strategies; one is to monitor the garbage weekly and inspect the different bags the day before garbage pick up, list the largest contributors over two weeks or so, then research ways to can replace whatever causes the most waste. We found that paper towel, cotton swabs, tissue, plastic food scraps and several other disposable household items were also found.

Paper towel was mostly replaced by placing microfibre cloth bins with used and unused sections in paper towel dependent areas of the house like the kitchen. These bins are then emptied of used cloths and filled with newly washed ones ( as pictured ) on a weekly basis.

 Cotton swabs have been a major problem for years and are difficult to recycle depending on where you live. According to Q-tip, a brand well known for cotton swabs, certain Q-tips are compostable and under further research discovered several websites that have completely natural cotton swabs to replace other, less environmentally considerate types that are higher quality and more environmentally friendly. 

Tissue can also be replaced in most circumstances in a manner that most households should be able to do without much inconvenience, and in the long term should actually save money. Handkerchiefs carried by each member of the family can reduce dependance on tissue, and replacing tissue around the home with boxed handkerchiefs, sold by several small companies, can all but eliminate tissues.  

Decreasing plastic use can be more difficult because the majority of large cosmetics firms and food companies choose plastic over other options like cardboard and glass or even metal for numerous reasons. This makes it difficult for consumers to decrease their use of the many plastics, typically being used for packaging.

Despite this, there are many smaller and environmentally friendly companies that can be used. We were able to decrease our use of plastic by purchasing environmentally friendly cleansers contained in glass and cardboard instead of plastic; a good example is how, by eliminating your purchases from companies using plastic containers as Cetaphil, and transferring your purchases to often smaller, local companies such as the Farmesthetics skincare company, you can use very little plastic in comparison. 

There are many products that are still plastic based; throughout the home much of that is in the kitchen where products like Glad Wrap and disposable food containers are often used daily. There are numerous replacements for these product including beeswax wraps and lidded  baking dishes ranging in size and shape.

 A good example of one of these lidded baking dishes is the lidded bread loaf dish. These units can be reused indefinably and can save people who use them money; according to Amazon, a 70 sq.ft roll of Glad wrap costs $2.74. Assuming you use two of these every year, you will have spent $54.80 on Glad wrap every 10 years; we had been using around 6 every year, which means that we are spending $164.40 on Glad wrap every 10 years. If you compare that to a set of 8 silicone suction or stretch on lids that can last indefinably, and cost only thereabouts $30, the results of using disposable plastic is not only bad for the environment, but also expensive. We started to use less plastic in the kitchen by using some of these reusable wraps for home made baked goods, using plastic wraps only several times yearly. In some circumstances it is nearly impossible to completely rid a kitchen of disposable plastic wrapping techniques, but it is possible to make more environmentally friendly by taking advantage of many plastic bag recycling centers at local grocery stores, a convenient solution for old stocks of plastic bags. 

A way that we will begin to include this in our weekly routine will be to bring our surplus of disposable bags to our local grocery store when we go grocery shopping, therefore combining two trips in one.