Episode 6 - Plastic Waste in the Bathroom

Welcome to 1000 Ways Green! The show where we are going to give busy people like you easy ways to help save the planet for our future generations.


This week’s episode is going back to our series on how to remove plastic from our lives, but with a closer look in your bathroom. Onto this week’s three things:


Mint Green level: Your mint green level challenge this week is to switch out your plastic toilet brush with a sustainable Toilet Brush with a replaceable head. There is far less plastic in their brushes, you only need to replace part of it when it does go bad (which tends to last longer than most) and the brush heads are angled upwards which makes cleaning under the rim easy. They are a BCorp company, the brushes are made with bamboo, the plastic that is in them is recycled and they are a Plastic Bank Partner meaning they offset their plastic use with funds for recycling and ocean cleanup.


Also, another thing you can do as your old brushes go bad, don’t buy multiple. First, you don’t need one per bathroom and second, having only one not only requires less energy to produce but also means you’ll get to take a few more steps which will help your health and possibly earn you some money if you’re using the CashWalk app I talked about in the first episode.


Shamrock Green level: Even though doctors don’t recommend using Q-tips or cotton swabs for cleaning out your ears, the majority of people do and end up throwing away 415 on average every year, adding up to around 1.5 billion (with a b) thrown in the trash each year. So what can you do to prevent that? Buy a reusable Q-tip that allows you to use it and then clean them after each use. Now I’m going to be real with you, the ones I bought in the past were a bit of an odd sensation, and didn’t work quite as well as the cotton kind, so about once a week I still needed to use the standard kind, but that still decreased their plastic waste by over 75%. Now the kind I bought in the past I can’t find anymore and don’t have nearly as good of reviews as these new zero waste ones I’ve found for you and linked in the show notes, so hopefully they are better.


Forest green level: For your forest green level challenge this week we are going to look at body wash containers. Did you know that 1.4 billion plastic bottles are used and thrown away just for body wash every year? While there are ones you can buy that are reusable and will let you send them back so you’re not throwing each one away, and I’ll link some of those in the show notes, that isn’t our best option. For our forest green challenge to make the most impact you’d ideally make your own body wash from bar soap. This will take a bit of time but it has the biggest impact. I have the recipe for making your own body wash linked for you in the show notes that I’m hoping you’ll try.


Thanks for listening, that is it for this week. Next week we’ll cover a few more ways to remove plastic from your bathrooms and I’ll talk about good and disgusting ways to get lots of toothpaste past the TSA. Until next time, be green and be seen.


Links from the show: