Some sustainable swaps

Hello! I've been quiet on the blog-front recently, but have been making a few swaps in the background, so thought I'd do a quick round-up. Most of them have been in the bathroom, and it's really satisfying to see the cupboard emptying of plastic bottles and being replaced with wholesome-looking bars of sweet-smelling joy.

The tiniest things can fall under the radar – things like cotton buds and floss – so I thought I'd start there and work my way up. And then finally, I ask myself – what different does any of this actually make...?

Floss

Nobody enjoys flossing (I don't think) and every time I go to the dentist, I ask them if there are eco-friendly alternatives to the things they are recommending to me. The answer is usually yes. Here we have bamboo interdental brushes and Georganics plastic-free floss.

The floss is in a glass bottle and initially set me back £4.90, but you can then buy refills forevermore. The floss feels harder on my teeth than the old Oral B stuff, but I actually find that it works better because of that.

I picked up both of these things in Boots –
eco-dental care has gone mainstream.


Cotton buds

My pal Emma gave me these reusable cotton buds for my birthday last year. They came with a chuckle, as she thought they were a rather strange present, but I was happy with them! The pink one is for removing the last bits of make up and the yellow one is for everything else. They're easy to use and easy to wash. After a bit of research, I discovered that they're made of a mixture of fibre-glass and plant-based plastic, and they claim to replace up to 1,000 cotton buds and their packaging. Not bad!

If you don't like the idea of reusable ones, you can now also buy bamboo cotton buds, or cotton buds with a paper shaft, like these cool ones from Muji (everything is cool in Muji).

And the good news is that plastic-stemmed cotton buds are now banned in Scotland and soon will be in the UK – along with plastic straws and stirrers. The ban was due to come into force this month, but it has been pushed back six months because of coronavirus (Energy Live). But we might as well prepare ourselves now.

These reusable cotton buds can be found from the LastObject website.

Nail varnish remover

As I reached the end of my very old bottle of nail varnish remover, I searched around for a replacement, and found this delightful one on Instagram! It came from The Earth Shop and the ingredients are said to be safe for the environment as well as for me, which is good news.

When I first started using it I didn't think it was making much of a dent on my four coats of nail varnish (which included base and top coats). But after a little bit of persistence, it took off every last smidgen of dark navy blue. Unlike my old nail varnish remover, it didn't smudge the colour all over my skin. And it smelt so fresh! I actually found myself willingly sniffing it. So this is another swap that I actually prefer to the original.


Receiving this little parcel was such a treat.

Face cleanser

I have tried a few things here, and am yet to find something that is perfect for my skin. Just like any hunt for beauty products, the eco-friendly search can take a while. I found this cleansing UpCircle face bar in a health shop and liked the sound of it. It is 100% natural, vegan, palm oil-free and it had great reviews. It's powerful stuff. It definitely removed all of my make up, but I found it a bit drying on my skin, so I now using it as an exfoliator rather than an everyday cleanser. I will keep my eye on the UpCircle website and try some of their other things.

This bar was around £7 and it will last for months, at least.
Now that we're all in lockdown, I haven't really been wearing much make up, so there isn't much to remove. A dab of micellar water is going down nicely, which is an improvement on the three bottles – make up remover, cleanser and toner – that I was getting through in a previous life. Every little helps.

Is it making any difference?

But does every little actually help? Back in September I counted up all of the single-use plastic I had in the house – as inspired by War on Plastic with Hugh and Anita. I had a whopping 418 items, which came as a surprise, because I thought I was already fairly "aware".

Seven months later, after making a few fairly small changes, I once again counted up the items of single-use plastic in my house, and it came to... drum roll...

ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY ONE!

Which is an improvement of more than 50%. My single-use items have gone down by 57% to be precise. I do still have loads of nail varnish... and also a lot of felt-tip pens from my colouring in habit (is anyone else a fan of Johanna Basford?). But I must admit that it's great to see that all of these little swaps – which probably seem pointless on their own – are all contributing to a bigger picture. I do still have...

4 mini shampoo bottles
7 lip balms
17 contact lense cases
19 shower gels

but I'm getting there. Does anyone need a contact lense case? I might write to Specsavers and ask them to stop sending them to me. Watch this space!

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