Work Your Way To Zero Waste With Heyland & Whittle

Zero Waste Week is here, and at Heyland & Whittle HQ, we’re excited to share some of our favourite tips, tricks, and ideas for helping you to reduce waste at home.

Though climate change can feel so huge and overwhelming, small daily actions really do add up to make powerful, positive change.

We’ve compiled some of our favourite ways to reduce waste without compromising on luxury or lifestyle. Read on to find out more.

Be more Bea

We’re a big fan of Bea Johnson and her wonderful ethos that living a zero-waste life doesn’t have to be costly, time-consuming, or deprive you of things that you love.

Her philosophy of the 5Rs (refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot (compost)) has helped people all over the world to significantly reduce their impact on the planet in a way that’s also sustainable for their homes, loved ones, and lifestyles.

Simple swaps, like opting for solid shampoos and soap bars, can reduce vast amounts of plastic, and Bea encourages people to use and support zero waste, or bulk stores, wherever they can. Find your nearest bulk buy shop here.

Take your glass jars (we love this just from an aesthetic point of view!) and purchase exactly what you need, without any disposable packaging. For more of Bea’s brilliant advice, why not try any of her 100 tips for getting you closer to your zero waste home?

Recycled packaging

Of course, sometimes packaging does need to be considered, and this is where companies – especially in the beauty industry – have a responsibility to be more sustainable, use recycled materials in their packaging, and make their packaging recyclable, too.

We’ve all had the experience of ordering something quite small, only to have it arrive in a huge cardboard box. Making sure that packaging is suitable for the purchase in question is also something companies should be doing, to help customers reduce their waste.

Here at Heyland & Whittle, our Eco Collection is packaged in responsibly sourced FSC certified card. Our Eco Collection candles are also poured into gorgeous recycled glass jars. Once you’ve used your candle, just give the jar a wash and use it for water, flowers, or as a stylish holder for almost anything you can think of.

Eco-friendly luxuries

Speaking of eco-friendly luxuries, did you know that our soaps are palm free? You read more about this over on our palm oil blog post, and find out more about how palm oil, farmed irresponsibly, can cause huge damage to natural environments and the planet at large.

To help people use exactly what they need, when they need it, we also offer soap bricks that – pardon the pun – are a cut above the rest. Palm-free, our soap bricks are 1.5kg bars of soap that you can purchase and cut to size. Whether you opt for a charcoal cleanser or our luxurious olive oil-infused shampoo bar, there’s a huge range to choose from.

Not only do soap bricks reduce emissions by only making one delivery and cutting back on packaging, but it gives you flexibility over how much soap you’d like to use at a time. When you purchase a soap brick, you also receive the equivalent of four bars of soap for free – great for the planet, and good for your budget, too.

Love food, hate waste

Food waste is, unfortunately, one of the greatest contributors to carbon emissions. According to the Love Food, Hate Waste website:

“If global food waste were a country, it would be third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the US.”

Food waste – not just eggshells or bones – but the last few mouthfuls on your plate, or that slightly freckled banana – costs the average household £60 a month, that they could be saving.

By getting creative with your cooking, meal prepping, and loving your fridge and freezer, together we can help reduce the 45 million tonnes of edible food that gets thrown away in the UK every year.

For more ideas, have a look at the Love Food, Hate Waste site, and see how you can save money, reduce waste, and love the planet at the same time.

How do you reduce, reuse, and recycle? What other ways do you tackle waste at home? We’d love to know. And remember – all good change adds up.