Hi There, so this weeks blogs is a bit different in terms of covering a new topic and one that I have become more and more passionate about, becoming more Eco Friendly. I would say that i have become more passionate about this since we had our daughter and what sort of planet she will be living and bringing her own children into in the future. With this in mind I have started to take more steps in our house to reduce our plastic use and generally be more Eco, so what are those steps you say, well here they are.
Having a milkman
We drink quite a bit of milk in our household and this used to be on our weekly shopping list which generally meant buying our milk in plastic bottles from the super market. So earlier in the year I decided to order my milk via Milk and More which is delivered to my door in old skool glass bottles. I am not sure what it is but I am sure it taste better in a glass bottle. Once we have finished the milk we simply wash the bottle and leave it out to be collected when we have our next delivery and its reused.
Getting rid of baby wipes
So this was a fairly easy change for us as the little one is no longer in nappies but we did use them for face wiping etc. Instead of using the wipes after dinner we bought a load of flannels from the shop and we now use these so no more baby wipes in our house.
Switching to refill laundry liquid
We have a toddler so we go through a lot of washing in our house in turn a lot of washing liquid. I did originally try the eco laundry egg but I didn’t feel like it was really cleaning our clothes well, but on a spare of the moment shopping trip I stumbled across a refill shop which sold laundry liquid. We have been using this for a number of weeks now and it cleans and makes our clothes smell really nice, again this comes in a glass bottle which you just wash and refill. The other great thing that I discovered was that Milk and More sell it so its works the same as the milk which is great. I would have liked to have continued to use the refill shop but its just that little bit too far to just nip out for laundry liquid.
Using a shampoo bar
I had seen this been talked about on the some TV shows but had never really looked in the shops but decided one day to have a look and came across a couple of options in the supermarket. So I decided to give it a go. I have found that the bar is pretty good, it does take a bit longer than normal shampoo to get a good lather but you do get a decide amount. I do feel that it washes my hair pretty well and does smell quite nice so its something that I would be happy to continue to use rather than buy bottled shampoo.
Switching toilet roll
I recently ordered some toilet roll called who gives crap which is made from recycled paper and each roll is wrapped in paper rather than coming in plastic. Now I am not one to mess around with toilet roll so I was a bit nervous about this change but I have be really pleased. its triple ply and soft so I dont see myself going back to my previous brand, the other great thing is that you can order them on Amazon.
installing a heat pump
So installing heating was something that we needed to do but I wanted to make sure that we were choosing the best option for the planet. We have not had this installed to long but so far I am pretty pleased with it. We do still use electricity but as we use a renewable energy supplier which I think is still better than using gas or in our case the only other option for where we live oil. So this certainly was not a cheap option but in the long run this should save us money and also help towards saving the planet.
I think that one question that most people have about is going Eco more expensive? So apart from the heat pump nothing that we have changed has cost us that much more than what we were paying before. Milk is more expensive than what you would buy in the shops but for me its nice to have it delivered and I am happy to pay a few more pence to not have plastic. This is the same for for the laundry liquid it cost £4 for 500ml which will last about a couple of weeks so yes more expensive than what you would get from a bottle of persil but again it delivered to the door and I love the way that it washing our clothes. The next steps for us is to continue to reduce the amount of plastic that we use in the house as well as reducing our food waste and the amount of meat that we consume by introducing a couple of meat free days.
I would love to hear if you have any suggestion for how I can continue my Eco Journey so please feel free to leave a comment.