Living without plastic is a journey of behavioural change: it’s all about creating new habits… and all journeys begin with one step.
This message has infused our philosophy and approach since we began on our plastic-free journey over 15 years ago, long before living without plastic was a “thing.”
Here’s how we describe the approach on page 12 of our Amazon #1 bestselling book, Life Without Plastic: The Practical Step-by-Step Guide to Avoiding Plastic to Keep Your Family and the Planet Healthy:
If you are just starting out on your plastic-free journey, you may wish to heed an initial piece of important advice: As excited as you may be to embark on this journey, be careful about fully embracing plastic-free living cold turkey, and trying to do it all at once. Once you start noticing the plastic around you, it could overwhelm and discourage you quickly. Start with one change. Incorporate it into your life and routine. Move on to another. That’s why this is a step-by-step guide. Take it one step at a time. This is all about changing habits, and that takes time, effort and patience.
Today we invite you to create some clean, new, plastic-free habits with brushes and soap.
Brushes Without Plastic
We carry all kinds of brushes in our on-line boutique. In this post, the focus is on our Bottle and Dish Brush and our brand spanking new Bamboo Dish Brush with Replaceable Head.
It’s hard to find non-plastic brushes. The plastics and retail housewares industries make it so easy to just “go with plastic” and they keep churning out and distributing cheaply made plastic brushes of all sorts made from highly environmentally damaging virgin plastic.
And now for our regular microplastics warning, one we have been repeating for well over a decade: plastic products — such as brushes — release tiny particles of plastic (micro and even tinier nanoplastic particles) every time they are used. These particles go right down the drain and are not caught by municipal waste treatment facilities, so they end up in our waterways and oceans (where they are eaten by wildlife) and even in the air all around us. Just look at the air in your home through a sunbeam — some of those floating particles are microplastics, and you are breathing them.
It’s now clear that there are microplastics in the air and water all over the world, and the focus of current research is what effect this plastic pollution is having on us. The jury is still out in terms of solid conclusions, but the studies to date on animals such as mice or rats are disturbing and show reproductive and developmental problems.
We have always taken a precautionary approach to plastics. They are made of toxic synthetic chemicals, many of which are hormone disruptors such as bisphenol A and phthalates. So why not just avoid them completely?
All the more reason to choose non-plastic brushes. Our Bottle and Dish Brush is made of a hardy beechwood handle and coconut fiber bristles. That’s it. It does a bang up cleaning job, getting wonderfully into the interior rounded bottoms of bottles and corners of containers. And it’s 100% compostable at the end of its useful life. Or use it as kindling in your fireplace or wood stove.
Our Bamboo Dish Brush with Replaceable Head is the latest addition to our brush collection. It’s a clear favorite, and not only because it has a funky screw on and off 
replaceable head and is just plain cute. As well, the bamboo handle fits beautifully and ergonomically in the hand for washing dishes. And it also does an excellent cleaning job. The sisal bristles (“sisal” is a perennial succulent plant) are quite stiff, making the brush long lasting and effective for tough stuff like hardened egg yolk.
And yes, there is the funky replaceable head. Screw it off when it’s at the end of its dishwashing life, and screw a replacement onto the hardy bamboo base. Once again, you can compost it or burn it, or if there are still some bristles left, you could use it for more “dirty” cleaning jobs like bathroom tiles. Heck, you could even use it for cleaning your car’s hub caps. We’ve never tried that, but feel free to give it try.
Soaps Without Plastic
Soaps, whether for dishes or clothes or household cleaning, traditionally come in plastic bottles or some form of plastic packaging. We are not fans of plastic packaging. Here’s what we say about in on page 16 of our book.:
Plastic packaging makes us want to scream! It constitutes over a quarter of all plastic produced. We compost our organic waste and recycle as much as we can, so that means that the bulk of our garbage is . . . you guessed it: plastic. And practically all of that plastic waste is packaging.
Remember that cute dish brush with replaceable head from up above? You can pair it up with a block of our All-Natural Solid Dish Soap. It’s all-natural because it has just four vegan ingredients: coconut oil, shea butter, olive oil pomace, and sea salt. The fact that this soap is packaged in a recyclable kraft cardboard box saves on plastic waste and has a reduced carbon footprint because we are shipping you only the concentrated soap and not all that water that comes with liquid dish soaps. Why not just add the water yourself? You need water to wash the dishes anyway.
So here is where we get a little more intensely into behavioural change and new habit creation territory. To use this dish soap for doing dishes, you need to wet the brush, then rub it around on the bar of dish soap, then use the brush on your dishes. It’s a different — but no less effective — technique compared to having liquid dish soap right in your dish water from the start. All it takes is time and repetition to get used to it.
And if that’s too much of a habit change for you, well, we have another soap option that is just as plastic-free and has the same cleaning power, but is a little less of a behavioural shift. Our Pure Soap Flakes come packaged in a paper bag and are just that: pure soap flakes and nothing else. Again, no water. You add it yourself rather than having us ship it to you. In this case, though, you can simply add some flakes to hot water, just as you would a liquid dish soap, and use that water to clean your dishes.
These pure soap flakes — made of naturally-sourced sodium palmitate and sodium cocoate — are super versatile and can be mixed with water and other ingredients to make all kinds of other cleaners too, like hand soap, laundry detergent, all purpose cleaners, scrubbing cleaners. Yes, it’s all part of our let’s-do-our-best-to-help-folks-avoid-buying-mostly-water-in-plastic-jugs mission.
Each bag also comes with a little recipe booklet to help you get started. Curious? You can check out our virtual DIY soap flake recipe booklet here.
So now you’ve got some brush and soap ideas to get you going on your quest to live with less plastic. You are now aware of plastic-free alternatives to plastic brushes and plastic-encased soaps. And as we say on page 77 of our book: “[A]wareness is the catalyst for behavior and habit changes.”
This post began with a quote from our beloved book — we sure love it, and others tell us they love it too — so let’s wrap it up with another one that highlights a cherished concept of our co-founder Jay Sinha on p. 174:
[Early in this book] we talked about the fact that we all have “plastic” brains. That is, our brains are capable of transforming and changing due to the innate neuroplasticity of the human brain. Our plea is simple: Please use your personal cerebral plasticity to create some new plastic-free habits that will help reduce your consumption of plastic. Even just one simple habit shift—such as saying no to plastic straws [or brushes or plastic packaged soap ;)]—is utterly stupendous and will have a concrete effect by decreasing the demand for new plastics.
So yes, use your plastic brain to create new plastic-free habits — Onward!