A few years ago my family and I did a zero waste month. During the month I posted on Facebook each time I had a switch or change that I made in our lives. It was in February so it was 28 day challenge. I actually did it twice. Once the next February, so technically it was 56 switches. This is an update on where we are, what we have kept, what we have not and why.
Fifty Six is a lot of swaps, so I’ll just be highlighting a few of the bigger ones that come to mind. To be honest, the ones we still do have become so ingrained in our lives that it’s difficult to think of them. But a few are: reusable cloths instead of paper towels, toilet tissue that has paper instead of plastic around it, baking as much as possible with 2 kids, reusable bags (amazingly this is before it was a thing), reusable produce bags, composting, making our own yoghurt if we can (though the kids prefer the bought stuff), reusable straws, grow our own food, use green bags, reusable water bottles especially for the kids. Since doing this I also bought some Modibodi undies which have been really good and better than the reusable pads I was using.
The things we don’t do is mostly because this was pre-Covid and now there are lots of things we can’t do. For example, the butcher won’t take our containers anymore, we work mostly from home and don’t work near a Harris farm who are the people that had milk in a reusable bottle, I’ve had issues stepping into a bulk food store because the handles are not sanitised every time, I even have issues with reusable coffee cups because I’m worried I’ll give Covid to people.
Since doing the one month challenge we had a second child. That has also caused time problems. Sometimes there is more cooking and cleaning in the low waste options and a couple of kids with 2 parents working mostly full time can cause issues. That being said we did reusable nappies for 2.5 years still of the second child since she was at home for that amount of time due to Covid! So that was good.
The other thing we don’t do is the soap bar shampoo. It’s weird, but after using them for a while I started to get some really bad reactions from them with itching. I have needed to switch to head and shoulders in a bottle just for medical reasons. It was so disappointing because I bought so much of it and it was so expensive!
Things I’d love to start again is to go to a bulk food place. The source has opened in my local shops so it’s super close. It’s definitely not convenience that’s the problem here it’s Covid. I’d also like to do something new and that’s make ALL of my clothes. Down to my underwear. It would be great to get that done and is on the list! The kids make this difficult because of time, but hopefully one day will be achievable.
The idnividual articles for Angela's Zero Waste Challenge are availble here
