Our #2x12reductionchallenge continues! For the month of May we eliminated two more plastics from our lives. This was our fourth month of the challenge, so we’ve now made eight plastic reductions. We are pretty excited about our slow but steady progress! This month we each had our own individual plastic reduction focused on personal care.

Plastic Free Shampoo

Mike switched to using a shampoo bar! No more plastic shampoo bottles for him. We had heard good things about shampoo bars at Lush so we checked out their “naked” collection. In this case “naked” refers to packaging – completely sans packaging! As you may have noticed, Mike keeps his hair cut very short so he doesn’t have complex needs when it comes to shampoo, but his hair is thinning. He quickly selected the “New” shampoo bar , which contains cinnamon and peppermint to invigorate the scalp. He has been happily using it for a few weeks now. Couldn’t have been an easier switch!

Lush shampoo bars range from roughly $11 to $16 and last for approximately 80 washes. If you’re washing your hair daily like Mike does, that should last about 2.5 months. Lush was a convenient option for us, but there are lots of other shampoo bar options. Another brand that I’ve heard good things about is Ethique, which is available on Amazon. Starting with this Ethique sampler pack could be a great way to find the shampoo bar that works best for your hair type.

Plastic Free Body Lotion

This month I was running out of body lotion and wanted to find a plastic free solution. One of our local refilleries, Sonora Refillery, offers refills of body lotion. I was able to bring in my existing lotion bottle and have it refilled with a natural body lotion. It’s an unscented lotion that can be left as is or scented with essential oils. Since I usually put lotion on at night I opted for lavender – soothing and relaxing.

The environmental benefit of having my lotion refilled is that I was able to use my existing plastic lotion bottle. If we go back to the 5 R’s of a low waste lifestyle, this is an example of the third R: reuse. My lotion bottles gets to be reused over and over now, preventing me from having to find a way to recycle it. As Mike wrote about in his article “Why Recycle is the Third R”, recycling shouldn’t be our primary sustainability solution. It’s better than putting a product into a landfill, but it’s great when we can rely on refusing, reducing or reusing instead!

Stay tuned for more of our sustainability adventures and plastic reductions!

xo, Nicole