Zero Waste Living Guide

Zero waste living and reducing plastic waste is always on our mind. We’ve tried hard to cut down our plastic use during our travels over the years. Now we’re learning more and more about the zero waste lifestyle whilst living in the UK. We’ve just bought our first apartment in Brighton and decided that we want to have a zero waste home here.

Zero waste living means reducing your plastic waste and minimising the amount of rubbish which is sent to landfills. A plastic bottle can take 450 years to decompose and a plastic bag 1000 years — crazy. Living zero waste focuses on the three Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle. This zero waste living guide features products to minimise plastic waste, and tips to reduce, reuse and recycle.

We’re only just learning about zero waste living and reducing plastic waste. If you have any zero waste living tips or ideas for us then please share them in the comments section of this post.

Zero Waste Kitchen

Food Wrap and Storage — We’ve stopped using foil and cling film and instead opted to wrap and store our food in plastic-free ways. Most of our food is stored in hand-me-down orange Tupperware from my grandma. Any leftovers to go in the fridge or come with us for lunch go into our stainless steel Elephant Box. We use Boc’n’Roll to wrap sandwiches, flapjacks and other dry foods.

Recycling — Brighton and Hove council collect recycling across the city and there are communal recycling points all over. We live in a flat, so we use communal recycling points on our street to recycle our cardboard, tins, bottles and so on. We keep hold of glass jars and reuse these to store spices and dried foods on our kitchen shelves.

Composting — We’re part of a community composting programme run by the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership. Unfortunately flats in Brighton aren’t able to compost as easily as they can recycle. Instead, this initiative has community composting bins at various points in Brighton. Our nearest point is in Norfolk Square Gardens. How does it work? Well there are wooden compost bins which have a code lock. Once you join a group, they’ll let you know the code and you can add your raw waste to the compost. 

Takeaways — We love cooking but sometimes we like a cheeky takeaway. We soon realised that some takeaways are delivered in plastic boxes and plastic bags. We’ve decided that when we get a takeaway, we’ll opt for restaurants that don’t use plastic takeaway boxes. Instead of Indian and Thai takeaways, we often get pizza because we can recycle pizza boxes!

Zero Waste Food Shopping

Reusable Bags — Reusable bags are a big way we reduce our plastic waste. That stat about a plastic bag taking 1000 years to decompose has made sure we never take plastic bags from supermarkets and stores. We don’t take plastic bags when buying fruit and veg, and instead just wash our produce when we get home.

Local Veg Box — We’ve recently signed up to a home-delivered veg box from Simply Veg in Brighton. They deliver seasonal, locally produced vegetables each week. We’ve not had our first order yet, so we’ll let you know how it goes.

Bread — For bread, we mostly buy chewy brown loaves from the Real Patisserie or loaves from supermarket bakeries. This way we can avoid the plastic wrap from pre-packaged sliced bread.

Zero Waste Picnics and Outside

When we’re taking food to eat out, we use the storage containers and food wraps we mentioned above. We’ll often take food from home to avoid plastic wrapping that lunch foods and takeaway food comes in.

Water Bottles and Cups — We love a weekend picnic or spending a summer evening on the beach with friends. But we became conscious of plastic water bottles and plastic cups that make an appearance when there’s a bottle of wine to share. Our alternatives are this Klean Kanteen water bottle and these Klean Kanteen stainless steel pint cups. They’re both non-toxic and contain no plastic!

Eco-Friendly Gas and Electric

Gas and electric is a biggie when you get your own place. We switched over to Bulb, an eco-friendly gas and electric supplier. Bulb supply 100% renewable electricity and 10% green gas. They buy energy from independent renewable generators from across the UK. The other handy thing about Bulb is that all their customers are given the best price tariff. There are no packages or lock-ins. We also opted for paperless bills too and can manage everything from within our online dashboard.

Zero Waste Bathroom

Toilet Roll — You might not have thought about it before, but we cut down a bunch of trees to wipe our bums with. We’ve switched to environmentally-friendly loo roll from Who Gives A Crap. Their toilet roll is made from 100% forest friendly bamboo, meaning no trees are cut down. They also don’t use inks, dyes or scents.

The rolls are delivered in a large box (of 48 rolls) and are individually paper wrapped. We compost the paper wrapping. Even better, Who Gives A Crap donate 50% of their profits to build toilets for the 2.3 billion people (roughly 40% of the world’s population) who don’t have access to a toilet.

Bamboo Toothbrush — Forget throwing out a plastic toothbrush every 6 months. We’ve moved over to using eco-friendly bamboo toothbrushes instead. Watch out for ones where the bristles are made of plastic and try to get completely recyclable ones like the sustainable ones from Unwrpd, a zero waste delivery box.

Truthpaste Toothpaste — Toothpaste is another bathroom necessity that comes in plastic! Instead, try truthpaste, a natural mineral toothpaste which comes in a jar. Just put some on your toothbrush and brush as normal. You can get truthpaste as part of Unwrpd’s delivery box.

Soap and Soap Pouch — I’m currently using natural lemongrass essential oil soap and a soap pouch from Unwrpd. The soap is moisturising and the soap pouch means more foam is produced and it’s rough sisal material helps remove dead skin.

Shampoo — We’ve replaced our plastic shampoo bottles with shampoo bars from Lush. One shampoo bar lasts for 70 hair washes and it lathers up like a dream. If you’re travelling, these also take up minimal packing space, last for ages and aren’t flagged as liquids when you’re going through airport security.

Natural Deodorant — I use the amazing Lamazuna Natural Deodorant that came in my travel pack from Naked Pinecone. I’ve tried a few natural deodorants and this is by far the best when. It has a chalky texture, is friendly on skin and isn’t sticky. There’s no plastic packaging and all products from Naked Pinecone are zero waste, including this deodorant, shampoo cubes, lip balm and Shade sunscreen.

Safety Razor — I’m not sure why society started using plastic disposable razors instead of stainless steel razors. We throw away over 2 billion disposable razors a year! I bought this Weish safety razor from Amazon and got some replacement blades from Boots. 

Sanitary Products — You all know I’m a huge proponent of the Mooncup (it comes in two sizes — A and B). Tampons and sanitary pads produce over 100 billion pieces of waste each year and 80% of single-use period products contain synthetic materials and plastics. Aside from the environmental cost, do you really want those plastics and chemicals inside you?

If you’re uncomfortable with the idea of Mooncups, then there are other options out there including period pants and non-toxic tampons. I also have a pair of Thinx hiphuggers (I had to pay a whopping £13.50 import tax on them though!) which I wear overnight.

Zero Waste Cleaning Products

Traditional cleaning products have long been known to be full of toxic chemicals that can irritate skin and be harmful for your health. We’re trying out a few different eco-friendly cleaning products, including Method and Ecover. Our favourites have been Method’s all-purpose spray and their washing-up liquid. Method’s products have recycled and recyclable packaging, and their ingredients are responsibly sourced and biodegradable.

Instead of kitchen roll and disposable green kitchen sponges, we’ve opted for reusable kitchen sponges which we can toss in the washing machine and re-use. We’ve also got a vegetable brush that we use to rub off dirt and kiwi hairs (you can eat them skins on if you rub the hairs off) instead of a scourer.

Zero Waste Bedroom

Pillows — We didn’t find a way to get our bedroom essentials without plastic wrap. However, we did avoid pillows and duvets which use duck or goose down (yes, unfortunately when down is used it means the animals are factory-farmed and slaughtered). Instead our pillows have hollow fibre filling made entirely from recycled plastic bottles. Our pillows are lush as well, so highly recommend.

Mattress — Our mattress is the eco-friendly bamboo mattress from Happy Beds. The fabric is bamboo yarn, a natural hypoallergenic and biodegradable. Unfortunately, the mattress did come in plastic wrap. Be aware that if you buy from this brand, there is no free returns policy.

Second Hand Household Items

Freecycle — Freecycle was our saviour when we first moved into our flat. We managed to get a large box of nearly new kitchenware including pots, pans, utensils and a coffee grinder for free. Good items can go quick on Freecycle but it’s a great place to get furniture and other bits and bobs second hand. 

Charity Shops in Brighton — The London Road charity shops are well-known for being the ones to go to for second hand furniture. We bought a large mirror from Cancer Research over there. Also check out the The Recycled Wood Store over that side of town.

Flea Markets in Brighton — Brighton is full of fabulous flea markets where you can pick up furniture, picture frames, mirrors and all sorts. We often frequent Brighton Flea Market in Kemptown and the Saturday Outdoor Flea Market in the Lanes. Other popular flea markets and second hand stores are Snooper’s Paradise and North Laine Antiques.

Second Hand Bikes in Brighton — I bought a nifty second hand bike from Cranks in Brighton. They’re a DIY bicycle workshop run by volunteers and it’s a not-for-profit. They help you out with bicycle repairs and do up old bikes and sell them on. There’s a real community atmosphere here and lots of kids learning to fix up bicycles and scooters. They regularly update their Facebook page with second hand bikes for sale.

Buyerarchy of Needs

As part of our zero waste living endeavour, we’ve been thinking a lot more about what we’re buying and whether we really need it. We’ve always been minimalist types because travelling around the world with just a 30L backpack means you don’t have space for too much.

Keen to avoid cluttering our flat with useless junk that comes with plastic by-products, we’ve been using Sarah Lazarovic’s ‘Buyerarchy of Needs’. This buying pyramid encourages you to try all the alternatives before buying something new. Basically, “buying” is only done when all other options (use, borrow, swap, thrift, make) are exhausted. Even when we get up to buying, we try to buy second hand from charity shops and flea markets before we buy new.

Share Your Zero Waste Living Tips

We’d love to here more ideas for zero waste living and reducing our plastic waste! Whether you’re a zero waste pro or an anti-plastic pioneer, we’re always keen to have more tips and ways to improve. Please share your thoughts in the comments below, we’d really appreciate it.

If you live in Brighton, then let us know! We’d love to meet you for a coffee and to chat more about the environment, cutting out plastics and living clean and green.

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This post contains products provided to us by a few generous brands who care about the environment and wanted to help us on our zero waste journey. We only ever write our honest opinions of the products we use and wouldn’t recommend our readers any items we don’t personally love.