Ailish Lalor
Cleaning things is important: but oftentimes the products we are encouraged to buy for cleaning and washing our homes, dishes and clothing are pretty terrible for the environment. They come in heaps of plastic packaging and contain ingredients that damage our water systems. Over the past few months, I’ve been experimenting with ways of improving the products I use to clean, and as I’m now quite happy with what I’ve done, it’s time to share. The next couple of blog posts will detail more sustainable ways of doing the laundry, keeping those drains clear, and surface and bathroom cleaning. This one, as you may have surmised from the title, is about doing the dishes.
First, you need dish soap. For the past few months I have been happily using Werfzeep’s ‘Cleaning Soap’, scented with lemon and citronella. The soap is solid and comes wrapped in brown, compostable paper, is palm oil free, and fully biodegradable. The bars last an astonishingly long time: we have been using ours for nearly four months now, and only just over half of it is gone. For €4,25 apiece, it’s very reasonable as well. You can find it here: https://www.werfzeep.nl/en/cleaning-soap.html or at LekkerNassuh.
Then you need a sponge. While a lot of zero waste bloggers tend to favour the aesthetically pleasing wooden brushes, which are also a nice option (the head can be composted when it needs to be changed, and the handle is reused with a new head), we wanted to go with something as close to a dishwashing sponge as possible. I chose one from levenzonderafval.com which is fully compostable when used and made from a natural sponge. As you probably already know, the normal washing up sponges are made from plastic and do not decompose. This sponge is also not dyed and works well for removing almost all dirt: it does struggle with burnt bits and oatmeal.
That’s where the copper scrubber comes in. Also from levenzonderafval.com, it’s made completely for copper and so is completely recyclable at the end of its lifetime. Just for the record, these are really beautiful objects, I’m quite obsessed. They look like Christmas tree decorations (I know it’s January, leave me alone). They’re soft enough to scrub your dishes and glasses without scratching them, but they remove everything, even oatmeal.
With these three things, our dish washing regime only needs motivation to be complete, but sustainability can’t help us there. Tune in next week to learn how we keep our very odd plumbing in working order. Wild.
Act Aware 