Easy Tips for a More Sustainable Home

This Earth Month, we hope you learn some useful tricks and discover new products that you’ll use year-round!

While it may not be feasible for you to swap your car for an electric model or outfit your home with solar panels just yet, we’re sharing some easy and accessible ideas and products for a sustainable home Green-Up, now and into the future!

Recycle all you can!

The OG of sustainable home tips: Please make an effort to recycle all you can!

We have entire articles that outline what can/cannot be recycled as well as items most-commonly mistaken as recyclable, as well as the meanings of the recycling code numbers on your plastics!

• To make it more fun, we found a couple of great recycling bins:
  • These bins from the Container Store are affordable and made from 90% recycled materials!
  • These stylish bins from MoMA are made from 100% recycled plastic and will look great wherever you place them at home or office.
  • Pro Tip: If you have limited space, save your paper shopping bags and use them as disposable bins you can recycle along with everything else (note: you should never toss your recycling in plastic bags.)

Choose home goods made from Recycled Materials

There are lots of great brands making their products either from recycled materials or that are made to be recycled. When you’re in the market for something new, a little research to find and support a company that’s making efforts for our planet will go a long way!

We’ve already found a few for you!

• These FabHabitat Rugs are made from Recycled plastic bottles (like ZenWTR bottles!) and manufactured using fair trade principals.
• These plates and bowls, serving bowls and serving platters by Made by Design are affordable and made from 70% post-consumer recycled PET water bottles.
• These mixing bowls, also made by Made By Design are made from 62% post-consumer recycled PET water bottles.
• Sustainable brand Buffy fills comforters, pillows and mattress protectors with 100% recycled PET plastic (each comforter recycles about 50 plastic bottles, pillows recycle 24-30 bottles each!)
• Pillows from One Little Pillow are available in sizes from babies to adults and are filled with 100% recycled plastic bottles as well (each standard pillow reuses 39 plastic bottles!)
• Nomadix Towels are made from recycled plastic bottles (each larger blanket is made from 20 plastic bottles) and the brand donates 1% For the Planet.
• This eco-friendly oven mitt is made with recycled plastic water bottles to protect your hands while helping the planet.
• This outdoor furniture is made from recycled plastic and the maker, Polywood, recycles an average of 400,000 landfill-bound and ocean-bound plastic containers every day.
• Even Windex is using recycled Ocean-Bound plastic to make the spray bottles for select products and offering eco-friendly refill containers so you can reuse the spray bottles.

Reuse all you can and replace disposable, unrecyclable items with reusable ones

• We’ve never met a candle jar we didn’t repurpose! Once they're done burning, you can reuse candle jars as mini succulent potters, bud vases and catchalls for a variety of items (our favorites are ear swabs and hair pins!)
  • To clear the jars, freeze them then break out the remaining wax. To remove any stubborn bits, pour boiling water into the jars and let them cool fully- any remaining wax will melt and float to the top when cooled!
• Replace disposable makeup wipes, cotton rounds and ear swabs that you can’t recycle with reusable makeup removers and ear swabs. We like the Last Round from Last Object!
• Reuse old shirts and any soft fabrics for cleaning rags instead of tossing them out, and use disposable razors to de-pill sweaters, hats, gloves and scarves.
• Never throw out your shopping bags! Paper bags can be reused to collect recyclables in place of a (or as an extra) recycling bin and plastic bags can be used as small garbage bin liners, or stashed in your car or bag to be reused on your next shopping trip!

Buy rechargeable vs. battery-operated electronics when possible

• Light the way with these highly-reviewed rechargeable touch-lights!
• Voted best rechargeable clothes shaver by Good Housekeeping, this MagicTec model has almost 30,000 Amazon reviews and a 4.6 star rating!
• Whip up foamy WFH lattes with this rechargeable milk frother that has over 4,000 4.5 star reviews on Amazon.
• Remote-controlled cars, known to go through batteries quite quickly, are now available in rechargeable models. This one has over 9,300 reviews on amazon with a 4.4 star rating!
• If there isn’t a rechargeable option for what you're buying, or you don’t need to replace any of these items just yet, use rechargeable batteries instead of disposables. A 4-pack of these Eco Recharge batteries will prevent 2,000 disposable batteries from going to the landfill. For info on recycling rechargeable batteries, visit Earth911.com.

We work to make it easy for you to make sustainable choices, whether that means choosing ZenWTR, reading our deep dive bogs or joining our online community! Drop us a DM on Instagram to share your favorite green-home hacks! 

Happy Earth Day!