I’m not a crunchy mom or anything like that, but you’d have to be stupid to not be worried about the environment. Here are some easy things you can do in your home to be less of a problem. Okay, some might not be ‘easy’ but they are all very doable.
Tupperware pretty much sucks for leftovers (although for mixing bowls it’s okay). It stains from tomato stuff and gets oily and is difficult to wash properly because the oil clings to the plastic. Leftover big glass jars, from like pickles and stuff, are sooooooo much better for storing leftovers. They are easier to clean (and thus require less water) and are see-though so you don’t have to look in the Tupperware to figure out what it is. Plus you can put soups in it very neatly. Biggest downside is that it’s not great for freezing-I still use plastic bags to freeze stuff.
Big glass jars also have the bonus of sometimes having cool designs. There’s this Slavic grocery story near us that I get big jars of pickles at and it sometimes has cyrcillic lettering on it and that looks cool. And the ones I get at the mideast grocery has this lovely little logo of a smiling lady on it.
I only figured this one out recently and I’m sorta ashamed that it took me this long because of how many empty plastic bottles of body wash I generated. Also, body wash is mostly water. Why pay for water when you are already in the bathtub? You can buy all kinds of cool soap made from all manner of ingredients. You could even make your own soap, if you were so inclined. Perhaps one day when I do not have a toddler running around I will try.
Like that scene where Captain America is wailing on a punching bag and his butt is just perfect, this one is for the ladies.
Each time you use a pad for your period you create three separate pieces of garbage – the wrapper, the adhesive sticker, and the pad itself. I guess for the tampons it’s just the wrapper and the tampon, but that’s still a lot of waste. You get some of the washable ones, there’s no longer that waste wake. Seriously, I’ve cut the amount of times I need to empty the bathroom trash down to nothing. They wash up fine.
They are also much more comfortable cause there isn’t that adhesive strip sticking to your nethers, but they are thicker and take some getting use to, but they aren’t like a diaper. But let’s be real, your period all around sucks anyway, whatever you use to catch the blood with isn’t going to change the experience that much. I don’t think they make reusable tampons cause at that point you’d just be using a mooncup or whatever they call em. I don’t know, I don’t like tampons.
I had one of those “there’s got to be a better way!” moments after several months of buying disposable baby wipes for my son. They fill up the garbage, they aren’t recyclable, they are expensive, the packages dry out if you don’t close them in just the right way, they aren’t great for skin…on and on. They suck. So I looked it up. There’s all kinds of recipes out there on the internet, but I synthesized them. Also lol, the instructions were like, ‘fold up the cloths’ and I just jam the sons of bitches into the container, like I got the time to fold up the rags I’m gonna be wiping poopies with.
You need castile soap for this, which is a special vegetable oil soap. It’s pricey, but you use so little of it at a time that it’s still economical to buy. You can find it in health food store or online. You will also need olive oil. I use nice olive oil, like the kind for making dressing with not cooking in, but I guess the lower quality would be fine as well. For the wipes themselves I cut up some old t-shirts and leggings. The fabric should be cotton or mostly cotton-not synthetic material because it won’t hold up to washing as well.
Mix a tablespoon of olive oil and a tablespoon of the castile soap with four cups of warm water. Then put the rags into a plastic container with a sealable lid-like a big margarine tub or cool whip. I use old Greek yogurt containers. Pour the mixture over the rags- it helps to layer it like a lasagna, like put in a quarter of the rags, then the soap, then more rags, then more soap. They last for a while. Wash them on the highest setting in your machine. It’s important that you dry them before using them again otherwise they start to smell a bit mildewy.