5 Easy Steps to a Plastic-Free Bathroom

One of the first places, I took action in during my personal journey towards a less wasteful lifestyle is the bathroom. At a very early stage, my transition began already when becoming more conscious about ingredients in cosmetics and care products. I started to only use shampoo and other products made of natural constituents, because I wasn't happy with using chemicals anymore. And eventually, I found out for myself that making your very own products and/or deciding for longer-lasting versions is not nearly as complicated or time-consuming as I had expected. Therefore, I'd like to share 5 very easy ways of changing your bathroom habits in favor of the zero-waste lifestyle.

 

Bamboo toothbrush, toothy tabs, rye flour, ruby cup and Dudu Osum Soap - easy ways to get rid of plastic packaging in your bathroom

1. Soap Instead of Body Wash

My mom always bought sweet-smelling, colorful shower gels when I couldn't decide what to buy for myself yet. And of course, I kept on using the same kind of body wash for a very long time. At the same time, I remember that my grandma always used this particular bar of soap and it was actually just because of this memory, that I started using soap for my showering routine, with the very same soap brand like my grandma. Apart from becoming a little nostalgic under the shower from then on, I also avoid to buy a new plastic bottle of body wash every other month. This might be quite obvious to you already: soap bars are a lot more durable than shower gel and they mostly come in paper packaging. If you'd also like to avoid that last bit of waste, there are several shops offering soap bars without any packaging. Also, there are loads of different kinds of soaps, not only for different skin types and body parts but for washing your hair and shaving, too.

So, when trying to reduce your plastic waste in the bathroom, you could consider treating yourself with a nice piece of soap after emptying your body wash bottle.

 

2. Toothy Tabs Instead of Toothpaste / Making Your Own Toothpaste

I keep my tabs in a glass container to keep them from getting wet.

Of course, it's always easier to go zero-waste when there's a zero-packaging store in the city or town, you live in. If you live in a city with such a store like I do, it's very easy to get rid of another item, one almost can't imagine without plastic packaging: tooth paste. Almost all the zero-packaging stores I've been to offer so-called toothy tabs - tiny condensed powder tablets that contain different ingredients like kaolin clay powder and sodium bicarbonate (also known as baking soda or natron ;) ). Before brushing your teeth, you take one tab in your mouth and chew on it for 10 seconds, so that the powder turns into a paste. Afterwards, you just brush as usual.

Avoiding packaged toothpaste (that might also be filled with micro-plastic by the way) when you don't have a zero-packaging store in your city is not too difficult either. You can make your own toothpaste with very few ingredients: baking soda and coconut oil.

Just take 2 tablespoons of both and mix it up with 10 drops of your favorite essential oil, for example peppermint oil.

It's also possible to just brush your teeth with baking soda and water but there are more sophisticated recipes, too, for example with cacao powder and xylitol. I found this compilation quite helpful.

 

 3. Bamboo Toothbrush

So, when you're done with making your very own, possibly organic, tooth paste, it would be kind of ironic to put it on a plastic tooth brush, right? :) Luckily, the zero-packaging stores that sell toothy tabs, usually sell bamboo toothbrushes, too. Everyone who can't get one there can order a bamboo toothbrush online, at times even as a subscription. There are several companies that took up the idea of using a compostable and renewable material to produce toothbrushes which, when produced coventionally, are made of plastic and pile up on our landfills. These companies opted for bamboo, a fast-growing, antibacterial material.

Depending on where you live, there are different options to get a such a toothbrush:

There's Brush With Bamboo if you're from the US, Save Some Green for those from the UK and the Environmental Toothbrush for Australians.

If you live in Taiwan, you might want to check out the online shop of agooday where you can not only find bamboo tooth brushes but lots of other zero waste equipment, too.

And finally, to those living in Europe, I recommend Hydrophil, a Hamburg-based brand that evolved from a blog about topics related to water.

Lauren from Trash is for Tossers sums it up quite nicely:

4. Change Your Hair Washing Routine

The fourth possibility to get rid of yet another plastic bottle in your bathroom is changing how you wash your hair. You could use a solid shampoo bar, hair soap, baking soda or nothing but water. Actually, there are tons of other alternatives to customary shampoo. Instead of presenting all these alternatives now, I thought it would be better to focus on my own way of getting my hair clean: the rye flour method.

When I first heard a friend of mine say that she washes her hair with flour, I had the same confused look on my face that some of you probably put on while reading this. But it works and I'm really satisfied with the result, so don't be afraid to try it out! All you need is rye flour, a bit of lukewarm water, some stirring device and a little bit of patience.

Caution: don't use wheat flour for washing your hair. It will become very sticky and very difficult to get out.

Here are the instructions for your very own rye flour hair washing routine:

1) Take more or less 4 spoons of rye flour and mix it with some lukewarm water until you have a liquid but not too liquid paste (the texture should be something like pancake dough).

2) Then use the paste just like you would use shampoo, making sure to get the paste on your scalp in order to remove all unwanted greasy spots.

3) Let it soak in while continuing with your showering routine.

4) Rinse your head with warm water (I don't recommend using cold water because it gave my hair a rather wax-like consistency).

5) If you use wholegrain flour, you might want to use a big comb to untangle your hair and give it an extra rinse afterwards. Like that you can get rid of most of the remaining husk in your hair.


You see: it's quite simple and you might even save some money by not having to buy different kinds of hair products anymore. But there is a little snag, too: when I started using flour instead of shampoo, my hair didn't feel nor look nice at all. It felt kind of waxy and was the opposite of voluminous. So if the same thing happens to you, you should be patient and not give up right away. Probably your scalp needs to adjust to this new treatment without any surfactants and other chemicals (I added a teaspoon of natron to my paste in the beginning which helped a lot!). In my case, it took about 2 weeks before my hair felt normal again. But after these 2 weeks, the results became better and better.

Those of you who would like to get to know more alternatives to plastic-packaged shampoo can find some first advice on Lucy's blog.

The german-speaking readers can also check out smarticular.net, my favorite site when in need of tips for making stuff on my own. They put up a whole post about washing your hair with rye flour, giving specific advice for different hair types.

I'll leave you with this short introduction for now. But I'll come back to this topic in another blog post and share all the mistakes I made and the lessons I learned with you. Maybe some of you can add to that list by then... ;)

My personal water-flour-mixture and the comb I use to get the husk out of my hair

 5. Menstrual Cup 

My last recommendation for getting your bathroom plastic-free goes out to everyone concerned with menstruation. Possibly, some of you don't experience menstruation themselves and therefore might not need this tip. If that's the case, I'd really appreciate it if you told a friend about it. Because - as I wrote in my last post - little changes matter! :)

I've been using a menstrual cup for more or less a year now and I'm really happy with it. As you might have guessed by now, a menstrual cup is a long-lasting alternative to tampons and pads. It's a little cup made out of medical silicone that you insert into your body while on your period. When necessary, you clean the cup by emptying it and rinsing it with some clear water. If there's no possibility to rinse it, you can also just wipe it out with some paper. Once a month, the cup is boiled in hot water for 5 minutes to sterilize it. So, essentially there's no waste generated throughout the whole process. Also, a menstrual cup protects you a lot better from leaking than tampons or pads do.

There are A LOT of brands for menstrual cups and you can find several review videos for each brand on Youtube. The chart on Kim and Amanda's blog gives a nice overview over the most popular brands and their characteristics. The site gives great advise for using menstrual cups, too and info about topics you might worry about when thinking about using a menstrual cup for the first time.

A year ago, I decided to get a Ruby Cup. Because a friend had told me about the company and because I liked their social business model. For each Ruby Cup you buy, the company gives a cup to girl from a country of the global South like Ghana, Kenya and Nepal. Find a little introduction to using a menstrual cup and the mission of the company in the video below:

I hope the alternatives to conventional bathroom products, I pointed out, inspired you a little and you're thinking about trying it yourself now...

Don't hesitate to comment if you have any questions, concerns or feedback.
Also feel free to share with your friends. :)

Thanks for reading and sticking with the Sustainery!
Hanna