For me, a big part of aiming for zero waste is planning my meals carefully and cooking at home. Between that and the reusables I take my breakfasts and lunches to work in, cleaning dishes feels like a constant chore (not to mention my partner loves to cook, admittedly delicious, meals he insists require the use of every dish in the house).

Since it’s something I do for 84,000 hours a day, I figured I’d better find some zero or low waste swaps to make my time spent at the sink a little less damaging to the environment.

Luckily when I started looking, there were lots of alternatives to the single use plastic bottles and polyester (plastic) sponges and scrubbers I was in the habit of using.

For the time being I’ve settled on buying liquid biovert dish soap in bulk from karma co-op here in Toronto. I just re-fill the last bottle of dish soap I bought. I also started buying sponges made from recycled materials, but those have to be replaced fairly frequently, so I’ve switched to dish cloths, the lovely wooden scrubber and the copper pot scrubber pictured. That little copper scrubber is a marvel. My old pots and pans are looking shinier than they have since I got them.

My next zero-waste dish soap swap experiment? Bar soap!

Have you tried washing your dishes with bar soap? I’d love to hear any recommendations in the comments!