Reducing Your Waste: How we do it!

Last week we promised to share some waste reducing tips. Like so many, maybe your red bin is overflowing and you're looking to reduce your waste. In no way are we perfect and we are still learning and shifting our habits but we hope that some people might find this helpful.

So for us there's been a few big game changes.

First shift was adding 3 chooks. We built (okay Ben built) an inexpensive (but time consuming) simple (bloody fancy) chook house, and we welcomed Tom, Nick and Harry about 6 months ago. They are super easy to look after and they manage to smash through all our kitchen scraps in record time. We'd easily give them one kitchen bucket of food scraps a day. In red bin terms that's reduced our overflowing bin by about 7 bags per week! 

Second shift was recycling soft plastics. Far Out! Unnecessary soft plastics are totally overused in packaging and it drives us crazy. Think individually wrapped things like baby rusk packets and chip packets, but then there's cling wrap, plastic bags, and the list just goes on. Now that we have access to Redcycle soft plastic recycling bins it has seriously cut down our waste. We just collect it in one of our kitchen cupboards, bag it up and drop it off at Coles.

The third shift has really just been changing our habits to be more sustainably minded. We try to make meals out of the contents of our fridge and pantry, in the old days we would've just chucked it out if it wasn't eaten. We also consciously try not to buy over packaged things. It's difficult at first, especially with two young kids, everything marketed towards them seems to be individually wrapped! We don't buy things like Le Snacks, individual yoghurt's and small chip packets, they are gobbled up in 30 seconds and then sit in landfill for like another 30 years! We just choose to buy more things in bulk and put the individual servings into washable containers. 

The last big shift for us has been minimising single use items. We are not infallible, we still use some single use things, we are busy and I forget or get disorganised so the changes we've made have been gradual. Our switches to date are:

👎🏻 disposable nappies 👍🏻 modern cloth nappies

👎🏻 disposable wipes 👍🏻 washable wipes

👎🏻 plastic water bottles 👍🏻 reusable water bottles

👎🏻 plastic straws 👍🏻 reusable straws

👎🏻 plastic toothbrushes 👍🏻 bamboo toothbrushes

👎🏻 disposable coffee cups 👍🏻 reusable coffee cups

👎🏻 plastic bags 👍🏻 reusable shopping bags

👎🏻 cling wrap 👍🏻 bees wax wraps or containers

We don't feel in any way that we have had to sacrifice on functionality, it is purely just a different habit or consumer purchase. And the added bonus to all of this is that most of these alternatives are money savers. Winning!

We sell a range of sustainable accessories, swim nappies and modern cloth nappies from our shop. If you're not familiar with Cheeky Wipes, I urge you to check them out. Cheeky Wipes are a super easy no fuss solution to disposable wipes. Ditching disposables not only reduces your waste, it saves you money and protects your Little Eco Baby's skin from the nasty chemicals and fragrance in commercial brands. I can confidently vouch for their effectiveness. Before making the switch Ben and I used to joke about how many wipes it was going to take to clean the latest No2 nappy. I'd hear him call from the change table "it's a five wiper!" But seriously, we can now clean one of "those" poos with one wipe, okay, maybe two!

To say thanks for taking the time to read our post, we are offering a 10% discount for all blog readers. Just enter CHEEKYBLOG10 at checkout to receive 10% off all online purchases. This discount does not apply to nappy service packages, but don't pass over our nappy service! Remember a baby in disposables equates to 2 tonnes of landfill! Packages range from $20-$37 p/w which is certainly comparable (or cheaper) than buying disposable nappies.

Aside from all that, if you're moving closer to reducing your waste we are happy and good for you! In years to come our babies and the planet will thank you for it.