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Are you looking for sustainable ways to create a more eco-friendly bathroom?
Here are some great ideas and eco-friendly products…
All of these tips involve swapping out plastic or disposable products for natural materials and reusable items.
Bathroom products made out of compostable and biodegradable materials will break down thousands of years before plastic materials, which is what makes them more sustainable and environmentally-friendly!
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1. Liquid Body Wash -> Bar Soap
Typical liquid body wash for your shower comes in plastic bottles or containers. To reduce the amount of disposable plastic you use, opt for bar soap instead. It usually comes in paper packaging (which is biodegradable) rather than plastic, and is just as effective as liquid body wash.
You can also swap out liquid hand soap with a bar soap. Instead of buying disposable plastic soap dispensers or liquid soap refill bottles, use bar soap. This is probably the easiest swap you can make in your bathroom for a more eco-friendly home.
Some beautiful and highly-rated options are these All Natural Handcrafted Soap Bars (pictured above; so pretty!) and these Natural Handmade Men’s Fragrance Soap Bars for the man in your life.
2. Liquid Shampoo -> Shampoo Bar
Just like liquid body wash, when your shampoo comes in plastic bottles, over the span of your lifetime you end up disposing large quantities of that plastic directly into landfills.
The most eco-friendly shampoo bathroom swap: is called a “shampoo bar”. These Ethique shampoo bars (pictured above) are meant to provide you with a plastic-free shampoo alternative with the same quality and effectiveness as your regular shampoo.
It’s just a solid block of shampoo (like a bar of soap) that you lather directly into your hair. A shampoo bar is still shampoo, but without the plastic. The Ethique brand caters to all your shampoo needs: dry scalp, oily hair, frizzy hair, kid-friendly, and more.
…Or Use Eco-Friendly Materials: Recycled Products.
Another eco-friendly choice for your shower is to use shampoo that is packaged in recycled plastic bottles, like Love Beauty and Planet products.
Love Beauty and Planet bottles are made from 100% recycled materials and are again recyclable when empty. The company strives to not harm the environment and you with their products that are sulfate-, paraben-, silicone-, dye-, and cruelty-free!
This eco-conscious company makes shampoo and conditioners (among other hair products) for fine hair, greasy hair, color-treated hair, curly or frizzy hair, and much more. They also sell other eco-friendly bathroom products like hand wash and body wash.
I have used their shampoos from the Tea Tree + Vetiver and the Coconut Oil + Ylang Ylang collections. I love their fragrances, that they are naturally-derived, and that they are made from recycled materials!
3. Plastic Flossers -> Reusable Floss Handle
I don’t know about you…but I have used disposable dental flosser picks most of my life (oops). Plastic flossers just make flossing so much faster and easier than using regular dental floss wrapped around each finger. Unfortunately, flossers are a big waste of plastic since each one is only used one time before it’s thrown away.
My favorite sustainable flossing solution: if you want to keep the convenience of a handle to hold the floss in place, you can buy a reusable floss holder (pictured above). Simply replace the small amount of dental floss between both “arms” of the holder each time you use it.
To break this unsustainable habit of disposable flossers, another eco-friendly swap could be to simply use dental floss without the plastic handle. (Yes…technically dental floss is still plastic (nylon), but it is so much less plastic when compared to the handle of a disposable flosser!)
…Or Use Eco-Friendly Materials: Compostable Products
One way to keep using a flosser is to switch to a more sustainable material such as these popular highly-rated biodegradable floss picks made of cornstarch (pictured above).
To create a completely eco-friendly flossing experience though (no holder, just the floss), there are plastic-free dental floss alternatives made out of materials like bamboo fiber, silk, or cornstarch (FYI cornstarch does not seem to be the online favorite compared to bamboo or silk).
For sustainable kitchen swap ideas, read my post: 9 Sustainable Kitchen Swaps for an Eco-Friendly House
4. Plastic Toothbrush -> Bamboo Toothbrush
If you use a plastic toothbrush (non-electric), here is another easy zero-waste bathroom swap. Use a bamboo toothbrush instead. There are many bamboo-handled toothbrushes available nowadays. Even today I saw they are available at my local grocery store, so check your grocery store next time you are there!
Note: The bristles of most bamboo toothbrushes are made of nylon (plastic), so if you want to compost this toothbrush (or throw it in your organics bin), make sure to break off the head or remove the bristles first. You also still throw it away in the trash, knowing that it will biodegrade hundreds of years faster than your old plastic toothbrush. 😉
Here is a sustainable starter set (pictured above) that is very highly-rated. It also comes with many of the eco-friendly bathroom products I listed above! 4 bamboo toothbrushes, a bamboo toothbrush case, bamboo-fiber dental floss and a reusable glass case for your floss.
5. Makeup Remover Wipes -> Reusable Washcloth/Cotton Rounds
You can even remove your make-up in an environmentally-friendly way! Rather than using make-up remover wipes or cleanser on cotton balls/rounds, you can use reusable alternatives.
This make-up remover face washcloth requires just water or toner to remove makeup. I use this exact make-up remover washcloth with just water every night! It is so soft and I love that it is a chemical-free option. One side of the face cloth is meant to remove the makeup and the deep-pile side exfoliates deep into your pores. Throw it in the wash and it’s good to keep reusing!
If your preferred method of make-up removal is a cleanser with cotton rounds, you can swap those with reusable bamboo and cotton rounds. This is an eco-friendly choice since they can be washed and reused instead of thrown in the trash like single-use cotton rounds.
In fact, just one reusable cotton round replaces one thousand disposable cotton rounds because it can be washed over 1,000 times.
BTW, this is also a much cheaper (“cost effective”) alternative, which I am a big fan of!
6. Plastic Loofah -> Natural Loofah
Instead of using a loofah that is made entirely of plastic in your shower, opt for natural materials. The best biodegradable version of a bath loofah is an actual “loofah”!
Did you know that loofah (also “luffa”) is actually a plant? When harvested and dried, these loofah plants are perfect for sponges and shower loofahs. They are soft enough on the skin, but tough enough for exfoliation. And since they are literally plants, they are biodegradable – contrary to their plastic counterpart.
There are many versions of natural loofah sponges. As you can see in the picture above of mine, it has half natural loofah and the other half is a cotton material.
Or Use Eco-Friendly Materials: Recycled Products
Another environmentally-friendly choice is a loofah made of recycled plastics. You may even be able to find recycled plastic loofahs at your local grocery store like I did! EcoTools uses recycled plastic netting for their Exfoliating EcoPoufs. And their EcoPouf Dual Cleansing Pads incorporate natural loofah on one side and recycled netting on the other for a 2-in-1 exfoliating and lathering experience.
EcoTool’s sustainably-designed products are made from recycled plastics and recycled aluminum. This is a more environmentally-conscious option because by purchasing items that are made of recycled materials, you reduce the need to make or harvest new materials for these products (like plastics and aluminums).
7. Toilet Paper -> Bidet
Bidets are the sanitary and zero-waste alternative to toilet paper. They discreetly attach to your toilet and use a precise stream of water to clean, instead of using toilet paper.
Note: Toilet paper is made of softwood and hardwood tree chips, and sometimes made of recycled paper pulp. It also requires a processing of chemicals, starches, and water. Bidets enable us to avoid the endless cycle of buying so much toilet paper. So save trees by using a bidet in your sustainable bathroom!
Without thinking too hard about this image (lol), I want to emphasize how much cleaner this stream of water (from the bidet) is than wiping with paper. I actually have this exact Brondell bidet. I really like that it is so simple, has a sleek design, and works so well! Once you try this, you won’t want to go back to just toilet paper – trust me.
This Luxe bidet was my second choice because of it’s high number of great reviews (around 28,000 ratings for a 4.6 star rating!), but I just preferred the look and simplicity of the Brondell bidet that I have (also with almost 10,000 reviews for a 4.5 star rating)!
The Theme…
You may have noticed by now an important characteristic of sustainability:
Eco-friendly living often goes hand-in-hand with frugal living.
- Using less: by using less, you are buying less.
- Throwing away less: by swapping disposable products for reusable items, you save money by not continually purchasing disposable products (like flossers, cotton balls, toilet paper).
Let me know in the comments if you have made any of these eco-friendly bathroom swaps!
Which one is your favorite? Do you plan to try out one of these sustainable swaps?
Happy swapping!;)
