Tips for sustainability in the home

Making small changes to our routine and how we buy can all help to reduce our impact on the environment.  As well as being committed to creating a natural, cruelty free perfume, we are interested in making our bathrooms and homes in general more green and clean. Here, we’re giving you some easy things that you can do to make your bathroom shelves a little greener and more environmentally sustainable.

Good news

A little good news, to begin with, According to Forrester, a global market research company, 2020 saw a substantial increase in how US consumers are shopping.  Following unprecedented environmental disasters such as wildfires and flooding, and a world wide pandemic, they found that 32% of US consumers are looking to priorities companies that are “actively reducing their impact on the environment”.  It’s always good to see consumers voting with their credit cards as this puts pressure on businesses to respond to demand, which makes us very happy indeed to see that things are changing, albeit slowly.

So what can we all do to reduce our impact, or at least be more mindful about what we buy and use?

Packaging:

Think twice about overly plasticised packaging.  You can buy a bar of soap instead of liquid soap in a plastic bottle. If you must have liquid soap, there are many that are made with recycled plastic or glass even. Avoid cellophane around boxes - it’s not necessary.

When you reach for that bottle of perfume that comes in a hyper designed bottle, cellophane wrap, ribbon in a big box, shiny plastic artificial straw - ask yourself if it’s going to make any difference to the actual fragrance inside.  Most of the packaging goes straight into the bin.  Focus on the contents. Which leads us nicely to….

Be curious about the contents!

What’s it made from? Remember that the word ‘fragrance’ listed on anything can hide a host of undesirables, such as phthalates and petrochemicals, which are really not good for us or the environment.  Hunt out transparent and honest ingredient lists. Opt for soya wax candles in glass or terracotta jars (better for you and the environment). Remember you’re breathing in the candles and absorbing everything you put on your skin.

Patricia Alexander-Bird of Anam Cara nutrition suggests to clients “finish one product and replace it with a more natural one, free from nasty chemicals”. Great advice we think.

Are you happy for it to go in the sea?

Microbeads are banned now because of the harm they caused to sea life (can you believe no-one thought of this when they were making them?) but think also about suncreams, some of which have bleaching constituents that can be harmful to aquatic life as well as phthalates in nail polish and perfumes which are bad for us humans too (some countries have banned them). It all ends up somewhere, and so worth thinking about how safe these things are.

Buy more local

Just like food, there’s plenty of choice when it comes to buying your products locally or ones made in Britain. From bubble bath to candles, there are so many British companies to choose from.  The last few years have seen an amazing array of British companies and many have excellent green credentials.   Try Neal’s Yard, Aurelia, Balance Me to start.

Reuse don’t recycle

We all know about wipes by now and how long they last in landfill as well as the damaging effect they have on the oceans as many end up there.  And cotton wool, whilst most is made with an amount of plastic thread, even if pure cotton, the energy and water taken to make something we’ll chuck in the bin is just wasteful. There are lots of brilliant reusable wipes that you simply wash like any towel.  You might like these from PacZero.

Water saving

Of course, using less water is always a good thing, even in rain soaked Britain. We all know about shorter showers, not running the tap unnecessarily, but do we do it?

Hopefully these few ideas will inspire you to try something new to minimise our impact on the environment.  Every little helps and just doing something small can make a big difference if everyone does it.

We’d love to hear about your sustainability ideas.