How to go zero waste in the bathroom!
The small bin in the corner of most bathrooms can be misleading as to the level of waste created in this vital room in a home. There is actually quite a lot of stuff thrown away in the bathroom. Bottles from products, toilet paper rolls, empty medicine packets, toothbrushes, tissues, the list goes on. The problem with this room is that often it is easy to forget all the composting and recycling efforts going on in the kitchen and just chuck everything in that small bin.
So here is an easy solution – get rid of the bin in the bathroom and replace it with a compost bin and a recycling bin! Also try to avoid making some of that waste in the first place. Here is how to go zero waste in the bathroom:
1. Reduce
- Swap disposables for reusables – e.g.
- use a body brush
instead of an exfoliating cream or gel. - Consider swapping toilet paper for cloth wipes (or the water pistol method 🙂 – read more here) and using cloth nappies.
- Swap disposable tampons and sanitary towels for a menstrual cup or reusable cloth sanitary towels.
- use a body brush
- Stop buying beauty products. If you have to use them – make your own from natural ingredients. You will save money, packaging and they will be better for you. If you want some ideas Mrs Pinch has some good ones – I really like the look of these homemade bath bombs!
- Consider swapping products that come in non-recyclable packaging for ones that come in packaging that can be composted or recycled e.g. swap deodorant in a tube for bicarbonate of soda (I buy it in bulk in paper bags).
2. Compost
- Toilet paper rolls
- Hair (fished out of the plug hole/ pulled out of hairbrushes…)
- Shaver clippings
- Tissues
- Cotton wool
- Biodegradable toothbrushes
- Wooden toothpicks
- Biodegradable dental floss
- Nail clippings
3. Reuse
- Grey / waste water – put a bucket under the tap or shower while it is running and save it to flush the toilet with. If it is soap/ product free you could water the garden or plants with it.
- Toothbrushes – great for cleaning with e.g. scrubbing tile grouting
- If you have kids, there are lots of toilet paper roll crafts out there – Maggie from Red Ted Art has a particular passion for them and has loads of brilliant ideas here. Gardeners can also make use of them to grow seedlings in.
- Bottles and containers can be reused and refilled with homemade products.
4. Recycle
If it can’t be composted or reused there is a good chance it can be recycled. Paper (e.g. old medicine instruction leaflets), cardboard (e.g. toothbrush packaging), plastic (e.g. shampoo bottles), glass (e.g. old perfume bottles) and WEEE waste (I’m not talking about what you do in the loo here -I’m thinking broken electric toothbrushes and razors) can all be recycled.
As you can see, going zero waste in the bathroom is really quick, simple and easy to do so why not give it a try!
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Some good ideas. Quite glad to see that we already do most of them. It becomes habit and then you don't even notice any more. I wouldn't go back to paper sanitary towels. Cloth ones are so much more comfortable. I have saved loo rolls for a while to make Christmas crackers.
Christmas crackers is a clever idea! I agree a lot of these things become habit once you have been doing them for a while.