How can you clean eco-friendly?
Being eco-friendly is just a natural way of feeling good and the push-back against plastic pollution from our homes is a big part of that.
It’s shocking to know that a plastic bottle can last for 450 years in our oceans, and this will break up into ever smaller bits that never degrade completely, so every single piece of plastic ever made is still with us.
Every day around 8 million pieces of plastic pollution end up in the seas and it is estimated that there may be around 5.25 trillion macro and microplastic pieces floating in the open ocean, weighing up to 269,000 tonnes.
It’s really easy to make some simple swaps to make sure we’re minimising the amount of plastic we throw away – into the oceans, waterways and landfill. Especially when we learn what impact our waste has on the Earth.
Deadly plastic pollution
Around our beaches in the UK, roughly 5,000 bits of marine plastic pollution have been found with over 150 plastic bottles in every mile. It’s not just messy and unpleasant – 100,000 marine mammals and turtles and 1 million sea birds die from plastic pollution every year. Recent studies found plastic pollution in 100% of marine turtles, 59% of whales, 36% of seals and 40% of seabird species examined.
So buying a sustainable eco-friendly product will help you reduce your single-use plastic waste and your carbon footprint without compromising on quality. Plastic-free swaps are easy to make and deliver great results.
Eco laundry egg
We can start to make a big dent in our yearly plastic pollution by choosing to do our laundry with an ecoegg. This ingenious award-winning product should save us from dumping up to 40 empty bottles of detergent and fabric softener a year.
Traditional detergents can contain these ingredients and because they don’t break down fully, they contaminate waterways, rivers and oceans with toxic heavy metals like cadmium and arsenic. And phosphates, a common ingredient, build up in waterways and lead to big algal blooms that can starve fish and other plant life of oxygen.
The ecoegg Laundry Egg is a great reusable and refillable swap to make. The mineral pellets work together in the water to draw dirt from your clothing fibres, softening clothing by changing the pH, leaving your laundry clean and fresh without using harmful chemicals traditional detergents use. It has been dermatologically tested on sensitive skin, and is cruelty-free.
It’ll need refilling after 70 washes so we’re also being kinder to the planet – it’s designed for a long working life, with a 10-year guarantee and can be recycled in your home recycling bin when it eventually needs replacing.
The ecoegg also saving you money – just 14p per wash with the starter pack, or 10p per wash when using the refills.
Before you switch, it’s a good idea to clean the washing machine with the ecoegg Detox Tablet to ensure that any residues from conventional products are removed. This will also make sure that your ecoegg has maximum cleaning power.
Eco-friendly clothes drying
A great eco-friendly companion to the laundry egg is the ecoegg Dryer Egg that will reduce drying time by up to 28% so you save time, money and energy, making it kinder to the environment. It is also recyclable and BPA free, reducing landfill.
It works by lifting and separating clothes in the dryer drum so all the available space is usable, drying clothes quicker. The surface nodules help soften clothes naturally as they lift fibres, breakdown stiffness and reduce creases.
That means you don’t need to buy plastic-wrapped softeners or tumble dryer sheets. To use, you simply insert the fragrance sticks into each Dryer Egg, chuck them in the tumble dryer and off you go!
The award-winning Dryer Egg is hypoallergenic so it’s  gentle on sensitive skin. It is also is cruelty-free, as it’s not tested on animals making it suitable for vegans. Plus, all the packaging is FSC certified, fully recyclable and features vegetable-based inks, reinforcing the commitment to sustainability.
Yoohoo bamboo
One more easy-peasy way to push away from plastic is to swap from your traditional paper kitchen towels to reusable ones made from bamboo. The thing is that the paper disposable towels are just too handy so we use them all the time to mop up nearly everything in the kitchen and around the house. Each time we open a new roll, that’s more single-use plastic going into the bin.
ecoegg Bamboo Towels are designed to be a complete, eco-friendly replacement for kitchen roll.
Packed as a roll they are perforated so can be easily separated, so have a similar feel to traditional paper towels – but the great thing is that they can be used time and time again, saving you money and being a big plus for the planet.
Each sheet is strong, super-absorbent, scratch and residue free and can be washed and re-used 85 times, so each roll can be used 1700 times. Apart from reducing plastic packaging pollution, you also cut the waste of single-use kitchen rolls going into landfill.
The ecoegg Bamboo Towels are made in the UK, from organic, sustainably sourced bamboo. The biodegradable packaging for these towels is also eco-friendly. You can clean with them all around the home and then give them a wash at 40 degrees, a quick dry and they’re ready to use again… and again.
Saving the oceans whilst you clean
We also have a new product on the block – OceanSaver EcoDrops are an excellent assistant for your bamboo kitchen towels.
Traditional home cleaners generate more than 29 billion plastic containers each year, and are made up of almost 90% water. As such, shipping them to stores, distributors and homes all over the country costs much more in both money, and carbon emissions.
OceanSaver created their award-winning EcoDrop cleaning solution as a complete replacement for these traditional cleaners, to help drastically reduce plastic and to reduce carbon emissions associated with shipping.
Each EcoDrop is 100% biodegradable, plant based, non-toxic, cruelty free and pet safe, giving you peace of mind when using it in and around your home. There’s an EcoDrop for each surface and room in the house: a bathroom cleaner, kitchen degreaser, multipurpose cleaner, all-purpose floor cleaner and a glass cleaner.
Simply put each drop into a freshly washed, reusable trigger spray bottle you have at home, add 750ml of water and give a gentle shake and you’re ready to go. You can buy one of the Bottles for Life if you really don’t have any bottles you can wash and reuse. Each Bottle for Life is made from plastic, however they are fully recyclable (unlike lots of traditional trigger spray bottles) and as the name suggests, they are designed specifically to last a lifetime.
Plastic-free pledge
It’s not hard to make a great contribution to a healthier planet and we can all made a huge difference by ditching single-use plastic. You can celebrate by being part of the Plastic Free July global movement for cleaner, oceans, streets and beautiful communities.
Plastic Free July has inspired over 250 million participants in 177 countries and urges us to choose eco-friendly alternatives to single-use plastic.
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