War on waste

One of the things that our family is conscious of is the amount of waste we generate, and single-use plastic bottles are one thing we try to eliminate as much as possible.

I like my sparkling water, but I try to avoid buying it in single-use plastic bottles. We are fortunate we have excellent tap water, so I add my own bubbles. If I do the maths, eight single-use plastic bottles per week by 52 weeks would suggest I have avoided using 416 single-use plastic bottles. What's even better, I am preventing the large majority of those bottles from ending up in the landfill.

Household cleaning products are the same. We reuse the dispensers and containers for laundry liquid, dishwashing liquid, and hand wash to cut down our use of single-use plastic bottles. We order refills of each product online, and it gets delivered. We then send back the plastic pouch that the refill came in, and it gets cleaned and refilled to be sent to another person. No plastic packaging goes to waste.

Now, it does take a little bit of organising to make sure you have the refills ready when you need them, and sending back the pouches is not as easy as throwing a bottle in the bin. But with a little bit of effort, we can do our bit for the war on waste.