Make a Low Impact This Week

For Low Impact Week, I will be visiting a room of my house each day -- to see how I can reduce my impact on the environment

First stop, the bathroom. I am appalled by how many personal care products are cluttering up the medicine cabinet and shelves. It's time to think about what I really need and what I bought on impulse and used only once or twice.

One thing I can do is stop buying plastic throw-away razors and invest in one to last longer than I will. Instead of shaving cream, I'm going to use Dr. Bronner's liquid peppermint soap. Buy it in bulk and it can take care of most cleaning needs, in conjunction with baking soda and vinegar.

I have also switched over to recycled toilet paper this past week. I'm using 7th Generation. It's more expensive, but making a low impact means making some major changes and thinking through the real costs of what we consume. The following is from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) web site:

Toilet Paper
If every household in the United States replaced just one roll of virgin fiber toilet paper (500 sheets) with 100% recycled ones, we could save 423,900 trees.

One more item before leaving the bathroom -- I have been using chlorine bleach to clean the toilet and for rinsing out the cat box. I read recently that chlorine bleach is not a good thing to inject into what is flowing through the sewer system. Hydrogen bleach is a better choice, supposedly. Here's an article that goes into the chemistry of various bleaching agents. If anyone knows of any good "green" bleaching agents, please post them below -- thanks! And be sure to share what you are doing for Low Impact Week.

Tomorrow -- the bedroom and closets!