I’ve been looking at the Green America website a lot lately and was inspired by this article
Ten Things You Should Never Buy Again. Now, we have some of these items in our home- gasp! However, in my quest to be Zero Waste I won’t be buying the following items anymore (some of these we’ve always done but I wanted to include them on my list as food for thought):
- Disposable cups, utensils and dishes (We have a huge package of biodegradable plates. I might use those in the future but I will probably just use the dishes we already have and maybe buy some cheap dishes from a thrift store for parties and whatnot)
- Paper towels and napkins (We got a great set of “un-paper towels” made from organic cotton from a company that was going out of business and some towels from Freecycle and use those all the time)
- Cotton face rounds/ cotton balls/ Q-tips (I LOVE to clean my ears out with Q-Tips. The doctor, however, does not so I’m done with those. For the face rounds and cotton balls I got these 100% organic fair trade cotton Face Rounds)
- Kleenex (Again, we got some 100% organic cotton fair trade Tissues from the same company as the face rounds. They’re a little pricy to start but we’ll never have to buy tissues again and they’re SO soft and nice!!!)
- Over packaged food (Do things really need to come individually wrapped and then in a box? Probably not… this one will be hard for me though because I love things I can easily grab as I run out the door)
- Bottled water (did you know it takes more water to make the bottle and over 80% of bottled water companies are just bottling the local tap water?)
- Store-bought health and beauty products (I get most of my products from Moondance Botanicals. They’re a great local shop in Denver that make all their own stuff and are locally sourced and organic when possible. My soap has 4 ingredients, love it!!!! And they refil most products for 40% off. What I can’t get there I’m going to make myself with things like Castile soap, vinegar, and baking soda)
- Cleaning products with chemicals and scary warning labels (Mostly we clean with baking soda and vinegar. We do our laundry with Rockin’ Green detergent and would recommend it to everyone! They’ll be releasing a line of cleaning products soon.)
- Disposable feminine products (If I put my baby in cloth, why not myself? It totally grossed me out at first but after learning about all the scary chemicals in that stuff and the horrible environmental impact I bought a great cloth stash of “Mama Cloth“… it’s big in the cloth diapering world. I used to have such horrid cramps I’d have to stay in bed all day, cramps no more… what kind of scary chemicals caused me pain??)
- Disposable diapers and wipes (Cloth all the way. We use prefolds with Thirsties covers and Rumparooz I made my own wipes from cut up T-Shirts I got off Freecycle)
- Cheap brands of clothing (Stuff that we know won’t last more than a couple years. We try to get things at consignment stores and thrift stores whenever possible)
- Stuff for a dog (this has nothing to do with being Green or anything… we just have to find a new home for our dog who isn’t adjusting well to the baby, so sad!!!)
Keep an eye on future posts for more info and review of these products!!! Let me know if you want recipes for any of the make-it-yourself cleaning and beauty products!
treehousedaily.com 