🍃 [FESTIVAL] How I made house cleaning more sustainable 🍃

[Jenny]

This topic is part of the Community Center Festival of Sustainability

The original topic was posted in the Italian-speaking Community Center by @Barbara664  and we have translated it below.

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In our homes, we need to have cleaning that is guaranteed by quality products that protect our health and that of our planet.

In my cleaning cart, you can always find bleach, alcohol vinegar, degreasing spray and the spray for cleaning the windows, but already for some time, I have devised a system to pay a little bit less for these products, which are known to be more expensive. So let me tell you: 

Given that, unfortunately, although the water supplied by the municipality in this area is very high in limestone and is quite unpleasant, despite providing guests with a glass bottle, I often noticed that the guests left piles of plastic in the house, so I wrote instructions to ensure that the plastic bottles were all left in a container in the garden. This allows me to pick them up and take them to the nearest eco compactor with both economic and recycling benefits, as the return of empty plastic bottles produces points that are converted into discounts for environmentally friendly products! 

Thanks to this initiative, the products I use for cleaning and the ones I leave for my guests are all environmentally friendly.

It is a useful gesture of care for the planet!

Are there similar initiatives in your area?

[TamaraAndSteve0]

My specialty is soap refills.  I am using the same hand soap pump for 20 years!

Our biggest challenge is guests using too much laundry soap - so we have opted for pods as even the eco friendly concentrated powders or liquids are overused.

Lots of ways to be green...

[Jennifer3225]

That is great news Jenny. So happy that all your cleaning products are all environmentally friendly. Those that don't have a voice like the elderly and children appreciate this. 

[Delphine348]

Hello @Barbara64 and @Jenny ,

Interesting to learn about how the plastic bottles are managed in your area in Italy. Is it local practice or national? Happy to see that Italian hosts care about the environnement, in fact the " Love sustainability" project is an Italian initiative that I hope we will soon all learn about in other countries.

In my area in France, there is no incentive to return plastic bottles because we can put them in a special container along with other recyclable wastes and they are collected at home by the household waste service.

So the thing I did to reduce guests plastic bottle consumption is that I added soda stream machine that makes soda water with tap water. It is very efficient and I now find less plastic bottles in the container at the end of my guests' stay.

We are lucky because tap water is very clean and pleasant to drink. I hope it will stay that way ! 

Maybe you could add water-filter jug in the kitchen to help your guest drinking tap water? Although I understand that it would deprive you of the money to purchase environnemental friendly cleaning products.