I’m a shower person – always have been, always will be. Baths are just not my thing. Therefore, I really enjoy my showers and find them relaxing (particularly as I tend to shower at night). Some of the things that were hardest for me to change when I started to lower my waste were my shower products. I’ll talk about hair care and razors another time, but for now I’m focusing on body washes, scrubs and moisturisers.
I used to have a plethora of body butters, body washes, soaps, scrubs and other similar sounding products that I would use in the shower. Even without thinking about waste, I was using a lot of unnecessary products on my skin and wasting money when simple things can be cheaper and more versatile. The first big thing I did that is really easy is to stop buying shower gel and to use bars of soap instead. You can, of course, buy shower gel and refill it at your local zero waste shop if you love your shower gel that much, but for me, a bar of soap does the job. I tend to go for moisturising bars that then double as an in-shower moisturiser.
The rest of my shower time used to be spent exfoliating and moisturising again with more products that all do the same thing. Now, I make a coffee based scrub, which is great for cellulite and for moisturising your skin. Essentially, you use some leftover coffee grounds that you squeeze the moisture out of, and add your desired oil (which tends to be coconut oil for me, as I firmly believe it can do anything). The only downside of this is that it doesn’t keep for that long, so I make it in small batches as and when.
These two small swaps have made my shower routine much simpler, and have shortened my shower time which has hopefully saved me some water. The biggest tip here is to not use bottles of shower gel and then throw them away – reuse them, or just get a trusty bar of soap (that comes in recyclable or no packaging, of course).
Waste Makes Waste 