9 picks · vetted plastic-free
The best plastic-free cleaning products
Concentrate tablets, solid dish soap and compostable cloths. The cleaning cupboard without the spray-bottle graveyard.
Cleaning products are the most refillable things in the house: almost every spray is 95% water, shipped in a single-use bottle. Concentrate tablets that dissolve in a reusable bottle, a solid dish soap bar and cellulose cloths cover the kitchen and bathroom with nothing to throw away.
There is a microplastic angle here too. Conventional sponges and microfibre cloths are plastic, and they shed as they scrub and wash. Cellulose, cotton and plant-fibre versions do the same job and compost at end of life.
Laundry and the bin
The laundry swaps get their own page, and a galvanized steel can with a locking lid replaces the cracked plastic bin at the end of every cleaning route.
Common questions
- Do cleaning concentrate tablets work as well as branded sprays?
- The active ingredients are the same class of surfactants and solvents; the tablet just leaves out the water and the bottle. Multi-surface, glass and bathroom formulas each dissolve into a reusable bottle in about a minute.
- What is wrong with regular sponges?
- The scrubby side is typically polyester or polyurethane foam, which sheds plastic as it wears down, straight into the sink. Cellulose sponges and plant-fibre brushes wear down into compost instead.
- Are Swedish dishcloths worth it?
- One cellulose-cotton cloth absorbs like a stack of paper towels, washes clean in the machine or dishwasher a couple of hundred times, and then composts. They typically replace dozens of paper towel rolls each.
- What should I swap first?
- The sponge, honestly: it is cheap, it touches your dishes daily, and the plastic version is shedding where you eat. Then the spray bottles as they empty, then the dish soap.
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