Note: this post has been updated in November 2020. This is a sponsored post and also contains affiliate links marked with an asterisk. All opinions are my own.

What eco-friendly features does the plastic free toilet paper have?

• The packaging. I have done quite a bit of reading about compostable packaging and there are often two problems with it. Firstly often, it needs hot composting and can’t break down in your home compost bin. Secondly biodegradable plastic is sometimes made of genetically modified corn. Neither of those things are a problem in this case. The packaging is home compostable and is made from potato starch.
• The paper is made from responsibly sourced trees. See the picture below for why they decided not to go with recycled paper. There can be small amounts of BPA in it too, which although minor is not ideal. That said the Ethical Consumer recommends recycled paper over virgin wood.

• Compared to another toilet roll they sell, they have made the roll 45% longer, so each roll will last longer. This means you need to buy less rolls and have less toilet roll tubes to recycle afterwards. They say that it also means 30% less delivery trucks on the road
• The toilet paper is manufactured and sold in the UK.
• The company has a partnership with and supports Tree Aid – a UK charity which helps plant trees in Africa.

Are there any downsides?

The toilet paper is 2 ply. If you usually buy 3 ply toilet paper it will seem a bit thin compared to that. That said I have tested it out and although it does seem a bit thinner, it still does the job just fine.

How does the plastic free Soft On Nature toilet paper compare price wise?

At the time of writing they are priced at £38.88 inclusive of delivery for 108 rolls. That works out at 36p a roll. This is very competitive with most toilet roll brands on offer in the supermarkets. Add to that it’s eco-credentials and the fact that each roll is longer than the average roll and it is very good value for money. You can buy it on Amazon here: Cushion Soft, Soft on Nature toilet paper *

If you were to compare it to other toilet brands:

• Soft on Nature toilet paper (2ply, in compostable packaging and made from sustainable sources in the UK): 36p a roll
• Sainsbury’s 2 ply recycled paper in plastic packaging: 33p a roll
• Who Gives a Crap recycled toilet paper (3 ply, plastic free and made in China): 75p a roll
• Cheeky Panda* bamboo toilet paper 88p per roll
• Skinkissed bamboo toilet paper £1.04 per roll
• Who Gives a Crap bamboo toilet paper (3 ply, plastic free and made in China): £1.20 a roll
• Dalia Eco-Friendly Toilet Paper, Maxi Rolls* £1.27 per roll (each roll has 800 sheets and the layers are bonded together, so it is technically 1 ply – I’m going to try this one out and report back)

Conclusion

Overall I like the fact that the Soft on Nature toilet paper:

1. Is made from sustainable forests
2. Has compostable packaging made from potato starch
3. Is made in the UK
4. Is affordable.
5. Supports Tree Aid.

I tried going toilet paper free for a while, but in the long run it didn’t work for me. Most of us buy toilet paper week in, week out and switching to a greener budget toilet paper like this is an easy eco-thrifty swap to make!

Follow them on Facebook and Instagram to keep up to date with their latest news.

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Do you ever finish a DIY project and end up with bits you don’t need? A tin of paint, some old decking, a kitchen sink? Wouldn’t it be great if there was a place you could go to give them away so that someone else could make use of them. How about a place that you could check to see if unwanted DIY materials were available for free for a project you want to do? Well now there is and it’s called DIYGogo! An innovative new website for giving away unwanted DIY waste. I interviewed Alex from DIYGogo who told me more about the site.

Tell me about DIYGogo

DIYGogo is a new website dedicated to repurposing DIY waste. We are a National Lottery funded Community Interest Company, with the following core objectives :

• To increase up-cycling and reuse of unwanted DIY materials
• To increase property maintenance and restoration opportunities for the financially marginalised.
• To reduce the amount of DIY waste going to incineration and landfill

The service is intended for for anyone to use including individuals and businesses across the UK. Both the service and the items are free – we cover our overheads from donations made by users.

Why did you set up the site?

Through my experience in the building trade, I noticed that an incredible amount of materials that could be reused would end up in the skip. Things like sinks, baths, kitchen units, timber, tiles, insulation, windows and more. The point came when I felt I had to try and do something about it. Especially now that our choices bear more heavily then ever. So I decided to set up DIYGogo around 2 years ago so that people could give their unwanted DIY waste away to be up-cycled.

There are various sites that you can give things away for free on. What is the advantage to posting DIY stuff on DIYGogo

There are other sites that serve to up-cycle unwanted goods, such as Freegle and Freecycle. However, these services don’t directly address the DIY sector. I felt there was a need for a service dedicated to up-cycling DIY reusables. The website is organised into DIY categories to make the search process simple, and every consideration has been taken to ensure the website is easy, convenient and safe for the user.

What is your vision for the future of DIYgogo?

In future we’d like to look into social development programmes, such as running course at schools; exploring the concept of up-cycling, using construction as an example. By demonstrating the potential of ‘waste’, we can contribute to the shift towards a more balanced society, that I see as so fundamental for the sake of our future. We’d also like to provide free courses to the community to develop DIY skills – brick laying for example. These skills can then be applied as professions, helping individuals to finding work or starting up businesses. There’s many ways we could take it, so it’s pretty exciting!

Get involved and join in with the DIYgogo Big Exchange on the 22nd April, by posting as many DIY re-usables as you can to really help things going. So if you have any bricks, tins of paint, timber or baths lying around, please stick them up on DIYgogo. No disposal trips or costs for you, you’d be helping others, and you’re doing something for the environment. Big thanks!

Thanks to Alex from DIYGogo for answering my questions. Let’s help him make this project a success – either by joining in on the 22nd April or trying out the site next time you have some DIY waste!

The post DIYGogo – a new way to repurpose your DIY waste! *Ad* appeared first on Eco Thrifty Living.

Yesterday I got up really early to go to London to find out about ecoATM UK (known as Gazelle at the time, but now rebranded to ecoATM) – a phone recycling company. Phone recycling isn’t a new idea in this country. However ecoATM is changing the game! They are bringing their phone recycling kiosks over from the US where they have been in business for 10 years, to the UK. These machines are designed to make it easy and convenient to recycle our phones.

They are really simple to use and are very clever. You take your old phone along, put it in the machine and it 3D scans it and then gives you a quote for how much the phone is worth. You don’t have to sell it at this point and can take it back out if you have second thoughts about it. If you do want to sell it though, you continue through the process and can either choose to get paid by PayPal or direct to your bank account. It takes under 10 minutes to go through the whole process.

You can take any phone in any condition to be recycled. I took along a very old broken phone with no battery in it to try in their demo machine they were showing and got offered a £1 for it. I think that is much better than having to find another way to recycle it and way better than it going in the bin! I might have been able to get more for it if I had been able to turn it on as they would have been able to see that it worked. They recommend turning phones on before putting it in the machine so that they can offer the best price for it.

They say that phones are either sold on, refurbished to be sold on or are recycled and that nothing goes to landfill. They work with companies that recycle every part of the phones. The refurbished phones are sold on in various ways including to developing countries.

They really care about the environment and want as little waste as possible. On their website it says they have diverted 19 million cell phones and tablets from landfill and that in those devices they have saved 670,206 pounds of copper, 1425 pounds of gold and 14668 pounds of silver for reuse! (They aren’t accepting tablets in the UK at the moment, but do in the US).

I did notice that before you put your phone in to be scanned they print out a sticker that you need to put on the back of your phone. However there is a little slot to put the plastic from the back of the sticker in the machine and they recycle it where possible depending on the location of the machine.

I wanted to know how they make sure they are competitive and give good prices for phones. They said that they update the prices daily and are constantly checking market value. They said you might get quoted slightly more for recycling through a website. However the online quote is often a rough guide until they have seen your phone and it might not be the final price you get offered. You won’t have that problem at an ecoATM uk kiosk as they will pay out straight away. I can’t say for sure if the prices are competitive, but I think their key selling point will be that they make it so easy.

The kiosks are being put in really easily accessible places like shopping centres and supermarket foyers. Currently they are mainly in the midlands in Morrisons supermarkets, but they have plans to expand all over the UK within the next couple of years.

Before I went yesterday my husband told me to ask them about fraud. Well they answered that question with bells on. So if you are thinking that this is the start of a great career as a phone thief, I would think again.

You have to be over 18 to use the machines and you have to take your driving license with you. You put your driving license into the machine and the kiosk films you and someone in ecoATM UK checks via the camera that you are who you say you are. If the phone has been reported as lost or stolen, then the phone will not be returned and they will have your picture on camera.

If you are worried about data on the phones, firstly you should wipe them before selling them, but if you forget ecoATM UK say they will only work with companies that data wipe the phones before doing anything else with them.

A lot of people don’t recycle their phones because although there are lots of companies offering phone recycling services, you have to go out of your way to find a website, fill out all the details and send it off. On top of that if the phone is very old or broken, you would probably think you wouldn’t get much for it. This means there are lots of phones going to landfill and sitting around unused in our homes. Phones are full of toxic materials and we really don’t want them going to landfill. Recycling them or selling them on is the best option when you have finished with them. I think these ecoATM machines might be changing the story for old phones in the UK in the near future!

Final word about ecoATM UK, after the meeting they sent us home with goody bags and I know these people care about the environment, because of their attention to detail in the bag! From the bag itself to the 3 things that were in it. A bamboo coffee cup, a wood coated USB stick and a wood coated portable battery charger. Yes there was a little bit of plastic, but overall I think they tried really hard to avoid it and I was really impressed!

I’m looking forward to them coming down South so that I can get recycling – got just a few phones to sell as you can see from the picture at the top!

UPDATE to this post:

ecoATM have recently done a survey of Brits and ‘found that, while almost all of us (83% and a whopping 90% of women),  are trying to do more than ever to cut our plastic, and recycle more, less than a fifth (19%) of us feel that we know what can and cannot be recycled.

What’s more, over half (57%) still throw away their laptops or mobile phones (and just a third of us have recycled them) leaching dangerous chemicals into the environment.’

So it sounds like it isn’t that we don’t want to do the right thing, we just aren’t sure what it is!

The post ecoATM UK – A new way to get paid for your old phones *Ad* appeared first on Eco Thrifty Living.

Please note alcohol should only be drunk responsibly and in moderation. This post is aimed at adults only.

I’m not a big drinker, but I do like having the occasional glass of wine and I particularly like it when that wine comes with sustainable credentials! Yali is a wine brand that cares about the environment. It is a certified sustainable wine of Chile. By 2020 they aim to reduce and recycle 100% of the waste they produce. They use solar panels, LED bulbs and ecological gases in the running of their vineyards. They have biodiversity areas on the vineyards to allow room for nature to co-exist with the vines and they use organic eco-friendly pest control products.

They got in touch recently and offered to send me a bottle of their Sauvignon Blanc and Merlot to review, which I was pretty excited about! I’ve been on a few wine tasting experiences before so I know what I’m doing :).

First you have to sniff:

Then you need to swill the wine around in your mouth:

Finally drink the rest of the glass – yes I know you are supposed to spit it out, but I don’t like waste

The verdict:

The Sauvignon Blanc – white wine:

I thought it smelled quite sweet. On tasting, I was surprised to find it was a light, crisp and dry white wine.

The Merlot – red wine:

It had a rich aroma and I thought it tasted more as I expected from the way it smelled with a rich depth of flavour, again not too sweet.

If you fancy giving either wine a go, they are available in your local Co-op Food and are currently on special offer, reduced from £7.50 to £5.50, until 28th January.

Note: this is a sponsored review, but opinions are my own.

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Battery free scales

I am a porridge for breakfast kind of woman. Every morning I weigh out my oats to make sure that I don’t waste food. My weighing scales have been annoying me for some time because the bit that you take off to change the batteries had mysteriously gone missing.

I’m not sure which kid to blame, or whether it was my fault :). So, it was a bit hit and miss if the scales would work as the battery wasn’t held in properly.

Imagine my delight when Fig and Pickle asked if I would like to try their battery free scales*! I wouldn’t have to worry about the bit covering the battery going missing ever again, because there wasn’t one! I loved the idea of it before I even saw the scales.

When they arrived there was a plastic bag over the scales, but otherwise it was packaged in cardboard. They looked really nice and stylish in white. All you have to do to charge them up for 3 minutes is turn a knob once! I did a test on mine and they actually lasted slightly longer than 3 minutes after a twist.  I have been using them for a few weeks now and they work really well.  You can zero the weight by pressing tare and there is a button underneath the scales which allows you to choose from a variety of weight options like grams and ounces and so on.

My only slight criticism is they are a bit slow to catch up with what you are doing. I find that once I have poured in an ingredient, it takes a few moments to show the weight. You can get round this though, by just pouring slowly.

They also sent me some hand held battery free luggage scales* which you shake to charge up. I tested them out on some bags and they worked well. They will be useful when we have students to weigh their bags before return home.

I have really enjoyed using their products and like the ethos behind the company. I would definitely recommend them. Take a look at their website here www.figandpickle.com to find out more about their story and read their blog.

The post Fig and Pickle battery free scales review! *Ad* appeared first on Eco Thrifty Living.

Crowdfunding has become a really popular way for new businesses to raise funds and bring their products to the market. All kinds of businesses are being being born via crowdfunding these days including lots of eco-inspired products and services. I am writing about two eco-inspired start ups today. The first is FLUX – a new type of period underwear. The other is Ecoed, which is an educational app currently being developed for adults, businesses, schools and children, to help them live a more sustainable life.

FLUX – period underwear crowdfunding campaign! (Picture credit – Flux)

Sanitary towels and tampons really should be a thing of the past. They pollute, they cost you money every time you are on your period and they are annoying in so many ways. Plus there are some great reusable alternatives like reusable sanitary towels and menstrual cups. There is also another alternative which I think sounds amazing!!!! FLUX is a new type of underwear that can absorb your period. Literally all you have to do is put on their knickers and that is it. They come in a variety of styles and are meant for women of all shapes and sizes.  Some even have a clip at the side so you can take your knickers off without taking your clothes off.

Body positivity, inclusivity and charity

The founder of FLUX says she is ‘crazily passionate about promoting body positivity and inclusivity, and breaking taboos!’ This is illustrated by using unedited pictures of women of all sizes, ethnicity and more to advertise her brand.

FLUX also wants to give back and they have a ‘By You, For Her’ scheme. ‘for every pair of FLUX bought by you, a girl in the developing world will receive a reusable washable cloth pad’.

Eco credentials

The panties include materials like bamboo, which is considered to be more sustainable than cotton and regenerated nylon. The nylon comes from Econyl. FLUX say Econyl ‘collect nylon waste such as fishing nets that are damaging our seas and the earth and unable to decompose. Econyl have already eliminated 11,000 tons of waste and avoided 41,000 tons of CO2 emissions so we’re working with a great team and helping to free our earth of waste.’ The knickers are super-absorbent and do contain synthetic (a.k.a plastic) micro-fibres. However they also plan to sell wash bags to go with them which they say will trap microfibres.

Support their crowdfunding campaign and hopefully bag yourself a pair of these pants by clicking here: FLUX Panties.* and pledging your support.

Ecoed App’s crowdfunding campaign.

Ecoed is a new sustainable living app which is currently being developed. It is described as a ‘fun, interactive, game aiming to help children and adults gain awareness and inspire action. They hope it will transform ‘their daily habits towards a greener way of living’.  This app could be really good for someone new to sustainable living or who want to get their kids interested in it.

The wider society

Ecoed say they are  ‘also looking into working with schools, business and civil society to develop programmes and joint projects’. They want ‘to reduce individual and collective environmental footprint, tackling practical, day-to-day situations where changes can be made to minimise environmental impact.’

Find out more and support Ecoed

Take a look at the video above and visit their site www.ecoedgame.com to find out more. They have also launched an Indiegogo campaign Ecoed Indiegogo campaign to support the costs involved with building the App. Ecoed would love your support in helping them achieve their mission.

Disclaimer this post has been sponsored by FLUX and Ecoed and contains an affiliate link marked with an asterisk.

The post Crowdfunding roundup – FLUX and Ecoed! Sponsored post/ Ad appeared first on Eco Thrifty Living.

Note – this post has been sponsored by BPI Auctions,  Go Green Leasing and Gumtree. It also contains an affiliate link. Opinions are all my own.

Switch to driving an eco friendly electric car.

Electric cars means driving without creating emissions on the road and can be a good eco friendly driving option. You still need to generate the electricity to charge them though. This energy can come from fossil fuels elsewhere. To get around this problem you could get a home charging point installed and switch to a renewable energy supplier. Then charge your car using that renewable energy. Solar panels and other home renewable energy sources can also be used to charge your car.

If you get an electric car and decide to have a charging point installed at home it might not cost you as much as you think. You may be able to get a government subsidy. Check for the latest subsidy information here: grants for electric vehicle charging

Another criticism of electric cars is your driving range is limited before you have to recharge them. Things are changing though. Some electric vehicles have ranges of over 200 miles. Others have a small petrol engine which charges the battery and helps to increase the range.

Switch to driving an eco-friendly hybrid car

A hybrid car is a compromise between an electric car and non-electric car.  When the vehicle is running it will use a combination of battery power and fuel.There are different types of hybrid vehicles. Some can be charged too giving them more battery power. When it is idling e.g. when you are stuck in traffic, it will just use battery power.

So overall in theory it will use less fuel, be less polluting and should save you money on fuel costs. There is a down side to hybrid cars though. When they are using petrol or diesel only they can be very uneconomical when it comes to fuel usage. My parents have a hybrid car. From their experience they have found that their’s switches over to solely fuel usage on acceleration and at higher speeds. So you really have to think about how you will use the car and as to whether hybrid or electric is the better eco friendly driving option for you.

Hybrid cars aren’t as eco-friendly as a car charged entirely on renewable energy. However (unless you get a plug in hybrid) you don’t have to worry about charging the car up between uses. Also your journey length isn’t limited by how long the car charge will last.

Lease a hybrid or electric car

If buying a new car isn’t affordable, leasing a hybrid or electric car could be a good alternative. It could also help you keep up with the latest developments in technology. Go Green Leasing is a great example of an eco-minded car leasing company. They go further than just thinking about the cars though, they also promise to:

• minimise their carbon footprint and strive towards being a carbon neutral company.
• educate children about the environment and ways to preserve it by donating 1% of their turnover to an environmental education scheme.
• utilise renewable energy sources wherever possible.
• recycle their company waste wherever possible.

Selling your old car

If you are going to upgrade your car to a more eco-friendly one you will want to sell or scrap your old one. There are lots of ways to sell cars including using auction sites like BPI Auctions or Gumtree You could also look for a hybrid or electric car through an auction site. You may want to consider a scrappage scheme if you have an older car and are looking to buy a new one . However be careful as they don’t always work out cheaper as explored in this article do diesel scrappage schemes match the hype?

Car sharing – another way to make driving more eco-friendly

You can save money and energy on a regular commute, school or college run by filling up the car with other people. Do a rota and take it in turns to do journeys or even charge people for the ride. Ask around at your place or work, kids school or college to see who is in your area and could do a lift share.

You can balance car driving with walking, cycling and getting public transport where possible, but these changes can help to lower your impact on the environment when you do get in the car.

Don’t idle your engine

Did you know that for every 2 minutes idling you use up the same amount of fuel as if you had driven a mile! If you idle for 2 minutes a day, you are adding 365 un-travelled miles to your fuel bills! Often we idle our cars in the winter to defrost our windscreens, so instead of doing that try this trick: how to defrost your car window without idling your engine.

Car picture credit to Go Green Leasing.

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This blog post has been sponsored by Seventh Generation. All opinions are all my own!

When I started this blog over 6 years ago, one of the first things I looked at was cleaning products. I used to buy normal cleaning products and an eco-friendly washing up liquid. The normal products came with scary symbols on the back of them with things like toxic and dangerous to aquatic life.

I decided it was time to stop using these toxic cleaning products. So I replaced my old cleaning products with vinegar, bicarbonate of soda, lemon juice, washing balls and cleaning cloths. I got so excited about it I even wrote this poem –  R.I.P. My chemical crammed cleaning cupboard. Most of my replacement cleaning products work really well but I couldn’t quite crack the toilet cleaning though and eventually went back to putting bleach down the toilet.  We use washing up liquid as well as my husband refused to be without it. I ended up going back to mainstream products for dish washing and toilet cleaning that weren’t eco-friendly.

When Seventh Generation offered to send me some of their cleaning products to try out I decided to give them a go. If I am going to have some mainstream cleaning products in my home I would rather have environmentally friendly ones.

Products sent to me to review:

I received a bottle of cleaning spray, two bottles of laundry detergent (one concentrated and one not), some washing up liquid, some glass spray and some toilet cleaner.

Fragrance

The products I received either have a mild fragrance or are fragrance free. I really like the fragrance of the mint and lavender scented dishwashing liquid – two of my favourite herbs!

Recycled Plastic bottles

Most of the products come in plastic bottles which are 100% recycled. One of the laundry detergents has a plastic inner and cardboard type outer made of repurposed fibre. It says on that bottle that ‘this package uses 66% less plastic (than a typical 2.9l laundry bottle)’.

I am not a fan of plastic. One of the reasons I moved away from mainstream cleaning products was to avoid it where possible. Recycled plastics are one of the better plastic choices out there though and are currently preferable to biodegradable plastics. This is because biodegradable plastics often either end up in recycling or landfill, neither of which are beneficial. In landfill they don’t biodegrade because the conditions aren’t right. If these are put into recycling they contaminate the batch as they are unsuitable for recycling. They also won’t break down in a home compost bin.

Palm oil

Sustainably sourced palm oil

Seventh Generation add SLS to their laundry detergent and washing up liquid. The sodium lauryl sulphate (SLS) they use  may have come from coconut oil or palm kernel oil . One of the reasons I stopped using conventional cleaning products was because I was trying to avoid palm oil.  They say that:

• Seventh Generation uses sustainability sourced palm oil. While there are sustainability and social issues associated with the rapid expansion of palm oil plantations into high conservation value rain forests in South East Asia, Seventh Generation pays a premium to support the production of Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) Certified Sustainable Palm Oil, which ensures that palm oil is not produced on forestland cleared since 2005. 

Problems with palm oil

Palm oil is widely used in cleaning products, foods and beauty products. However, it is is a controversial ingredient. This is what the say no to palm oil website has to say about it –

The industry is linked to major issues such as deforestation, habitat degradation, climate change, animal cruelty and indigenous rights abuses in the countries where it is produced, as the land and forests must be cleared for the development of the oil palm plantations. According to the World Wildlife Fund, an area the equivalent size of 300 football fields of rainforest is cleared each hour to make way for palm oil production. This large-scale deforestation is pushing many species to extinction, and findings show that if nothing changes species like the orangutan could become extinct in the wild within the next 5-10 years, and Sumatran tigers less than 3 years.

Seventh Generation are avoiding paying for palm oil from newly cleared forests, however they are still adding to the demand for palm oil. I mentioned earlier that we have been using a mainstream washing up liquid, which also contains palm oil, which is not sustainably sourced. It also does not come in a recycled plastic bottle, so compared to that I would prefer to use the Seventh Generation washing up liquid. It isn’t an ideal solution though.

Product cleaning ability

Laundry detergent

I usually use balls to wash my clothes. I didn’t notice any benefit of using the detergent over the balls. The balls work out a lot cheaper and create less waste overall compared to buying bottles of laundry detergent.

The laundry detergent came in two different types of bottles as I mentioned earlier. One was a brown cardboard type material with a plastic bag inner and the other was a recycled plastic bottle. The cardboard one says it used a lot less plastic than the plastic one. While that is good, I found the liquid dripped onto the cardboard and I couldn’t clean it off as easily. The worry is that the bottle won’t last long if it gets damp or wet or squashed for any reason.  It was also hard to work out if I was pouring in the right amount of detergent as the level indicators are difficult to see.

Surface cleaner and glass cleaner spray bottles

I had two spray products to try. A surface cleaner and a glass cleaner. The surface cleaner had a bit of a losing battle because I don’t see the point of them. I usually clean surfaces with water and a cloth. I add a bit of vinegar or bicarbonate of soda for antibacterial action if needed.  The surface cleaner was not antibacterial and so I just didn’t feel like I needed it. I put it to the test though and cleaned out some cupboards. I wiped them with water, then I wiped them with the spray and couldn’t see the difference. The cupboards had loads of marks on them though which only disappeared when I wiped them with bicarbonate of soda. I also struggled to see the markings on the spray nozzle for spray and stop.

The window cleaning spray didn’t compare to the action of a microfibre cloth and water. (Although microfibre cloths are problematic as tiny plastic fibres leach into the water when they are washed). Again the markings on the nozzle were difficult to see.

Toilet cleaner

The final product I tried out was the toilet cleaner. I found the lid a bit confusing to start off with and took it off, instead of popping up the sticky out bit in the lid. When I took the lid off I dropped it down the toilet – doh! I was quite happy with it though once I had cleaned it up and worked it out, . My toilet wasn’t particularly dirty, but the cleaner worked OK. As this product is in a recycled bottle and the ingredients aren’t as harsh as bleach I would use this over mainstream toilet cleaners. There is no SLS in the toilet cleaner but the list of ingredients seemed less complicated than the other products.

I wouldn’t buy all the products, but I would consider buying the washing up liquid and toilet cleaner. Thanks to Seventh Generation for giving me their products to try out / sponsoring this post and for taking the environment into consideration when developing their products.

The post Seventh Generation cleaning product review – sponsored post appeared first on Eco Thrifty Living.

This blog post has been sponsored by VisionDirect.co.uk.

Contact lenses are mostly plastic and some are designed to only last a day and then go in the bin along with the packaging they came in. Because of this I’m not a huge fan of them. I recognise though that for some people they will be a non-negotiable and although they may be happy to reduce waste in lots of areas, this might not be one of them. If you are going to wear contact lenses you can buy longer lasting ones (i.e. not daily disposable ones) to help reduce the amount of lenses and packaging going in the bin. The costs of contact lenses can mount up too and VisionDirect.co.uk say that you can save hundreds by shopping for contact lenses online compared to on the high street.

Here are 5 tips to save money on contact lenses:

1. Before you book an eye test, check to see if you are entitled to a free eye test for any reason. Some people will qualify for a free NHS funded eye test and lots of work places will also pay for eye tests. Even if you aren’t entitled to a free eye test, it is worth looking out for special offers from the opticians as they offer free eye tests from time to time.
2. Don’t buy anything straight away after your test. Ask for your prescription to see what it is that you need before you make any decisions.
3. Price check the in store costs against the online costs of contact lenses to see what is the most cost effective. You can even price check against optician own brand prices with the help of this handy  Opticians own brand contact lenses equivalents checker.
4. There are lots of different options when it comes to contact lenses. Packages from the opticians which include eye tests can seem like a good deal, but it is worth checking them against the cost of paying for eye tests separately (if you aren’t eligible for free ones) and buying the lenses separately online.
5. Factor in the way you choose to wear contact lenses into your buying choice. Bulk buying long lasting ones may work out a good deal and help to reduce waste if you wear them every day. However you may actually end up with more waste if you only want to wear them on special occasions because the lenses last longer than you need and your prescription may change before you get around to using them all.

So if contact lenses are a non-negotiable for you, make sure you think about the way you want to use them and shop around to get the best deal on them before you make any decisions.

The post 5 tips to save money on contact lenses (Advert) appeared first on Eco Thrifty Living.

Please note this post contains affiliate links. It won’t cost you anything extra to use them. But if you do click through and buy something it will help to support the blog – thanks!

Ingredients

The Puressentiel anti-lice lotion ingredients are 100% natural. They don’t contain any neurotoxins or synthetic substances. Plus they don’t poison the lice, they suffocate them, which means they can’t develop resistance to it.

Puressentiel say that they are: ‘committed to respecting nature by adopting an eco-responsible attitude from the harvesting of the raw materials to the manufacturing of each of it’s products.’

Puressentiel anti-lice lotion packaging and materials used

The anti-lice lotion is packaged in a plastic bottle and a cardboard box and comes with a stainless steel comb.  They only use paper and cardboard from sustainably managed forests printed with plant-based inks which is good. Obviously I would prefer it not to be in a plastic bottle. But it is recyclable.

I would buy it again

The packaging may not be perfect, but it isn’t always practical to be entirely waste free. I like the ingredients in this product and the ethos of the company behind it. Especially in comparison to the synthetic versions I have been buying.

Next time I have a need for a lice removal / deterrent product I will be trying these products out! How about you – do you have any experience with them? Would you try it?

For info, Puressentiel also have a preventative spray* which can be used in the event of an outbreak to deter lice.

UPDATE: I have since tested out the anti-lice lotion and comb. The anti-lice lotion was effective in the 10 minutes that it said it was on the bottle. I did find that three prongs fell out of the comb the first time I used it though. I have been in touch with the company to let them know. They offered to send me a new comb.

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