What Sneaky Waste Is Hiding In Your Home?

Today’s Easy Eco Idea is to cut out the sneaky waste. What’s sneaky waste you ask? Well it’s all those things that are so common place and so a part of our lives that we don’t even think about them.

Things like vacuum bags, mops and cleaning wipes.

These are of course things we need but can have less wasteful options. Mainly we use the disposable kinds because they’re more convenient. However, if you stop and think about how many you throw away every week, month or year they don’t really seem so convenient anymore sitting in a landfill somewhere.

If you have a vacuum that requires bags consider getting a bagless one when you need to replace your current one. There are lots of great ones out there with built in hepa filters and if you take it straight out to the garbage you won’t get any of the dirt you just vacuumed up back in the house when you empty it.

And those mops with the disposable cleaning pads are so easy and fast, but how many do you go through to clean the floor? You can buy mop heads that you can throw into the washing machine which still makes cleaning them easy and you know there aren’t any leftover germs the next time you need to mop. Fine, it takes a little longer to fill the bucket and then ring the mop out while cleaning, but not by much. Also, you can use eco-friendly soap in your bucket, whereas the only disposable cleaning pads I’ve seen are definitely not eco-friendly.

Cleaning wipes can be extra sneaky. You know that those wipes are going to end up in a landfill but they’re so small they can’t really take up that much space right? Once again this comes down to how many do you go through in a week or a month, all those little wipes add up.

But I think the sneakiest of all are the eco-friendly wipes that say they’re biodegradable. They may be designed that way but when they go into a garbage bag and that bag gets compressed and buried with a whole bunch of other bags, it’s pretty unlikely that those wipes are going to biodegrade. My understanding is that for something to degrade it needs air and light, 2 things those wipes will definitely not get buried under a mountain of trash.

Here are some great alternatives to wipes that are still easy and are most definitely waste free.

What other sneaky waste is hiding in your home?