NEW YEAR, NEW HABITS | LIVE LIGHTLY | CLEAN AND GREEN
Ditch the plastic with these old-school cleaning products — they work!
Eco-friendly cleaning can be more than lemon and vinegar
Is 2024 your time to quit tossing so many plastic containers into the landfill/ocean/recycling barge lost at sea?
By now, anyone who is paying attention understands that plastic recycling is an oxymoron. Like deafening silence and jumbo shrimp, a phrase of two opposite words that becomes a bit of a joke. And plastic recycling is just that — because no matter how badly we want to believe our pop bottles are remade into fleece jackets and decking material, the numbers tell a different story. (Scroll to the bottom to find the EPA’s data on plastic recycling. Spoiler alert: it’s depressing.)
Last year, I looked for a few simple substitutions, replacing cleaning products packaged in plastic for equivalent products packaged without plastic. Here are four easy swaps I’ve come to appreciate. These are all common household products that have been around for decades. They’ve had staying power because they work well, and none of them come packaged in plastic bottles.
I hope they work for you too!
DISHWASHING SOAP: Old-school powder or new-fangled pod?
Dishsoap pods offer convenience, no extra elbow grease, and double the plastic. Not only is the container so sturdy that will be around for a thousand years, the pods themselves dissolve into a plastic goo that will clog pipes and waterways for eons. Is it worth it to give dishes an extra rinse before loading them, and go to the added effort of opening a little spout on the box to pour out powder? I think it is.
The winner: Go old school with Cascade Dishwasher Powder in the green cardboard box.
HAND AND BODY WASH: Pump bottle of liquid soap or old-school bars of soap?
I’m a fan of soap. Aren’t we all? Liquid soap has it’s place — like in public bathrooms when no one wants to touch the same bar of soap. In that case, a refillable bottle is a good option (like my fancy rum bottle given a new life in our powder room.) Otherwise I go for bar soaps. Especially natural goat milk soap, which has the same pH as healthy skin. I’ll add a link here to my favorite Bend Soap, made just outside my hometown on a little goat farm. One less plastic bottle in my shower and in the landfill, plus they smell so fresh. Bar soaps win!
SCRUBBING CLEANER: Old school powders or liquid soft scrubs?
Marketing experts nailed it with plastic-packaged cleaning products. They seem so easy, and so much better. Yet the old school cleaners can still be found, usually on the lowest shelves of big box hardware stores and grocery stores. They cost less too, maybe because there’s no marketing to pay for.
I changed to baking soda for scrubbing my kitchen sink, refrigerator, stainless steel appliances, and most pots and pans. Baking soda is made of sodium bicarbonate, a natural mineral. It’s harmless and cleans gently. It also comes in a paper box. Who can argue with that?
For bigger scrubbing jobs, Bartender’s Friend is also my friend. Like baking soda, it’s an easy-to-use powder packaged in a cardboard cylinder, like a giant salt shaker. There’s a little more chemistry to know here: it’s made from oxalic acid, which is great for stubborn rust and baked-on stains. Great for metal cookware, glass, porcelain, and amazing on oven doors. It can scratch countertops though, and some ceramic coatings on bakeware. It’s not toxic for the environment at all, but can irritate skin and eyes.
So long, soft scrub!
LAUNDRY SOAP: Watery liquid encased in plastic or detergent strips delivered in a paper envelope?
What’s better than lugging gallons of (mostly water) liquid laundry soap home from the supermarket? I’d say having an envelope of laundry soap strips delivered every month wins that match-up. The strips are dry, rubbery rectangles that rehydrate in the wash to make suds. There are plenty to choose from — here’s a run-down on the different brands I found helpful. (Thanks, Isa and Laundry Guru!)
Just as with the liquid stuff, sometimes a detergent strip is not enough to get everything smelling fresh and looking good. A person could rely on a liquid stain remover made from a long list of toxic chemicals. Or…you guessed it…an old school option does the trick just as well. Oxyclean is biodegradable and non-polluting, and a couple tablespoons is all you need.
Dirty socks, meet your new bosses: detergent strips and oxyclean.
Why switch away from plastic packaging?
Because recycling doesn’t happen.
Here are those numbers, hot off the press at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Actually, the stats are from 2018, but I’m guessing they’ve only gotten worse since then. Turns out plastic recycling is the crash landing of the environment (another oxymoron — did you catch it?)
- 35.7 million tons of disposable plastic was generated in the US in 2018.
- Of that outrageous amount, 27 million tons ended up in US landfills. This mind-blowing number makes up over 18% of all the municipal waste we tossed into the trash.
- Less than 9% of all plastic considered recyclable actually did get recycled into a new, usable product.
- PET (the translucent, glassy kind of plastic) and HDPE plastics (like milk jugs) win the most-recycled award, each coming in with 29% of the thrown-away containers getting recycled.
It hasn’t always been this way. Sixty years ago, when plastic disposables were just a gleam in the petroleum industry’s eye, only 390,000 tons of plastic was generated and thrown into a landfill. Math is not my strong suit, but that is about 1/100th of today’s plastic production. Before the disposable plastic revolution took hold in the 70s, we managed to get along just fine without all this throwaway plastic glutting up our world.
I take that to mean that we don’t have to live this way. We can survive and thrive with less plastic. Even if it happens one laundry jug at a time.
More stories on living lightly on this beautiful blue marble we call home…
