Be More Eco 6: In the bathroom

One of the major things we are trying to do, as I've mentioned before, is to reduce our plastic consumption - a lot of this focuses on bottles (as does a lot of the attention in the media). But there are lots of other ways we are trying to be more eco-friendly in our house - here are some of the ones for the bathroom.  I have always, since it became available, bought toilet roll made from recycled paper.  Recently, I've been buying from Who Gives a Crap because of their additional credentials - building toilets in impoverished places, etc.  I've also tried to buy recycled paper tissues (we can't do without tissues in our house - 4 out of 5 of us have hayfever, for one thing!) - Sainsbury's always has recycled tissues, but only in this shape box. Recently, I've bought the other (more cube-shaped) size from Who Gives a Crap as well. 

This is one of Olivia's projects - she stopped using cotton pads and/or face wipes and made her own from old towels and t-shirts. After you've taken off your makeup or cleaned your face, these just go in the wash and get reused over and over.

Toothbrushes - three of us have switched to bamboo from plastic. The guys like the electric toothbrush (I know they are supposed to be better, but I hate them!) so they use disposable heads - but recently I've seen some ads for heads made from recycled plastic, so I might check that out.

This is Alex's razor - it still takes cartridges, which you have to throw away, but it's better than disposable ones - small steps!

My razor takes plain razor blades - wasn't sure how I'd like using it, but it works fine - I manage not to cut myself any more with this than I did with any other kind.

This is one of my favourite things - I've been wanting one of these for a while, before I got around to getting one. It's a little string bag that you put the tiny end bits of soap in, and hey presto - it turns into a scrubby thing with soap inside. Uses up all those awkward little bits of soap.  And you can see my wooden scrub brush on the side. 

I'm sure there are lots of other ways to improve your environmental footprint in the bathroom; these are just what we've done to do our part.