Ocean Protection Through Plastic-Free Living
When we think about disposable or single-use plastics we think of the obvious things like plastic bags, plastic beverage bottles and plastic utensils. But there can be a lot of plastics hidden in places you would never think. Here are five of them.
Black Friday and the consumerism it promotes seems like the opposite of environmentalism. But there are still a few reasons why I participate.
Your laundry might be one of the last places you think about when it comes to disposable plastic. Even though it’s probably only done once a week and the detergent last forever, there’s probably more plastic than you think. Here are 5 tips for reducing the plastic in your laundry routine.
Before you even start your laundry, there are choices you can make to ensure your laundry is plastic-free. As I’ve mentioned many times before starting with 11 Tips for an Eco-Friendly Wardrobe, when you wash your clothes, tiny fibers shed off of them and wash down the drain. These fibers are too small for waste treatment plants to filter out, so they go straight to our ocean.
Now, if those fibers came from natural fibers, like cotton, silk, hemp, and linen, they will eventually biodegrade. But if those fibers came from synthetic fibers like nylon, polyester, acrylic or rayon, then they act like plastic because they essentially are plastic.
Also, it’s estimated that a single load of laundry can wash 700,000 microfibers down the drain. So, skipping the synthetic materials when you’re buying clothes is a great start to plastic-free laundry!
There are a lot of nasty chemicals in commercial stain-removers and since my littlest one has eczema, I try to avoid anything that could potentially irritate her skin. A simple homemade option is to use a little bit of baking soda and dish soap. Baking soda is a natural abrasive and dish soaps have detergents that help lift off stains.
If this doesn’t work, I generally just let the stain be on my kids’ clothes. My kids are messy and they come home from school with all sorts of new stains on their clothes, so I don’t fret about it too much. With that said, I have one set of pristine clothes that they’re not allow to do messy things while wearing and I try to buy darker clothes or clothes with prints that hide stains better.
Quick tip: always rinse blood with cold water. (My older one gets bloody noses when the weather is dry.)
Just like all the other new plastic-free options (i.e. shampoo bars, dish soap bars, and etc), by removing the liquid in detergents, you can get them without plastic!
Like I mentioned early, my youngest has eczema so I stick with a powdered detergent from Seventh Generation. It comes in a paper box that I recycle, and I reuse the little plastic scoop for other things around the house.
I’m sure you’ve seen recipes for DIY laundry soap…but DO NOT make homemade laundry soap. Soap and detergent are two different things and you cannot make detergent at home. I first read about this in 101 Ways to Go Zero Waste and was shocked.
At the time, I was currently using a homemade laundry soap with baking soda, washing soda and grated bar soap. And I had noticed that my clothes smelled clean coming out of the washer but a few days later after I had put them away, they would smell slightly funky. Never bad enough where I gave it a second thought but still.
Anyways, long story short, soaps cake onto your clothes unless there is vigorous rubbing…which in most high efficiency washers, there isn’t enough of. So, unless you’re washing your clothes by hand, skip the homemade laundry soaps.
Back to some of the other dry options. There are laundry strips which look like dryer sheets but are concentrated strips of detergent. These usually come packaged in paper or cardboard.
Finally, a popular brand called Dropps has liquid detergent pods that are packaged in cardboard.
For zero waste solutions to laundry detergent, look for refill shops. My sort-of-local refill shop, Fill Good, offers both liquid and powdered laundry detergent refills! I can bring my own container to refill or they have glass containers I can purchase when there.
I have ordered some dish soap refills online but the few online options I’ve looked at don’t ship laundry detergent. Still worth a quick Google search if that’s what you’re looking for!
So, now that we’ve covered the washing, onto the drying! When I first started living more eco-friendly, I got rid of the dryer sheets and got those wool dryer balls without really thinking about it. You’re supposed to put something in the dryer. That’s what mom did, so that’s what I did. But after a while I noticed that the wool balls shed and left basically wool dust in my dry lint catcher and I started thinking, why do I need this?
This simple question has made my life so much easier and has streamlined so many things in my life. By skipping all the extras like fabric softener, dryer sheets, and whatever random thing companies are trying to sell us, it cuts down on plastic waste and saves you money!
This is an “extra” tip because it’s not plastic related. Maybe you want to make your laundry routine even more Earth-friendly by hang drying your clothes. You’re so awesome! Just make sure if you washed your clothes in cold water, to hang dry them in the sun. The sun is highly efficient at killing bacteria. But if you hang your clothes inside in a shaded area, that might encourage the growth of bacteria.
And to clarify, there’s a difference between cleaning and sterilizing. Cleaning is removing the dirt and grime from your clothes. Sterilizing is killing the bacteria that might still be on your clothes. We have lots of good bacteria that live on our skin but when we sweat that bacteria eats our sweat and makes us smell funky. Some of that bacteria and funk transfer to our clothes which makes them stink. So, make sure you sterilize your clothes with either heat or sunlight.
What do you think? Are you already using some of these tips? What does your laundry routine look like? Tell me in the comments!
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