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Telegraph

How to remove microplastics from your home, room by room

Look around most homes and you'll see plastic everywhere, on food packaging and cleaning products; even the mattress you sleep on and the sponge you scrub the dishes with are probably made from plastic. We know that our reliance on plastic is damaging the environment, but there is also growing concern for how it could be affecting our health. Plastic utensils, when in contact with heat, can leach chemicals into our cooking. Microplastics – plastic debris, sometimes containing toxins – can transfer from plastic chopping boards into our food. Studies have suggested links between microplastics and various health conditions. One way to address these concerns is to rethink our plastic use at home. For Kate Jones, author of a new book, My Plastic-Free Home, and owner of The Natural Living Shop, a refill shop in Lancashire, pregnancy was the start of a big reset and a plastic-reducing journey. She felt overwhelmed by the material things she was told she needed to buy for her baby and questioned the impact that plastic can have. 'It is such a new product in terms of how long we have been on the Earth, and we don't know the full consequences,' she explains. 'We know microplastics contain a number of harmful chemicals, and that the amount of microplastics in the world and our bodies is significantly on the rise.' Jones spent her maternity leave making changes, swapping plastic items for natural materials, and sharing her findings on her Instagram, @my_plastic_free_home. What started as 'an enjoyable obsession' evolved into an online community and is now a book, full of positive advice, tips, swaps and suggestions for living plastic-free. While Jones and her family have eradicated a huge amount of plastic from their home, she encourages other people to start slowly. 'Start with one thing that you'd like to change. When you're happy with that and it's become a habit, look for the next change. For a habit to stick and feel good, it shouldn't feel overwhelming.' Here are some easy swaps to start with. The kitchen The kitchen often harbours a lot of disposable plastic, which Jones says is top of the list when it comes to plastic she'd like to avoid. Food packaging is a key offender, so an easy swap is to use a greengrocer or a veg box delivery service where possible, instead of buying plastic-wrapped fruit and vegetables from a supermarket. Jones says that the sink is another great area to tackle. Use a glass bottle for washing-up liquid refills, or buy dish-soap bars. And opt for wooden dish brushes with tampico bristles that are strong and durable, over cheap plastic brushes. The wooden brush might change colour over time, explains Jones, 'and it is supposed to because it will eventually return to the earth and that is a good thing. We get it into our heads that we need everything to look fresh and new and we need to change that concept.' Jones avoids cheap sponges, which shed microplastics, and uses cellulose sponges made from wood pulp instead. These can go into the top rack of the dishwasher when they are dirty and eventually can be composted. She suggests using wood or glass chopping boards instead of plastic, swapping plastic food containers for glass ones with bamboo lids for the fridge, and using lightweight stainless-steel reusable containers when out and about. Try for plastic-free kitchen utensils and dish soap, and for food containers. Another top tip: Jones has a big basket of tea towels in her kitchen, which she uses for everything from wiping up spills to covering food. The laundry Before you even think about removing plastic from the laundry, you have to consider your clothes, explains Jones: 'If your clothes are polyester, they will shed microplastics every time you wash them. So a good thing to do is to look for natural fibres as much as possible.' Washing powders and tablets not only are packaged in disposable plastic, they also may contain silicones and parabens, which Jones says, 'aren't good for our waterways and are dangerous to aquatic life.' Although she is an advocate of making your own laundry products (you can find recipes in her book), there are also many eco-friendly laundry products on the market. Try laundry sheets, where the powder is embedded in the paper sheet (an ideal travelling solution and good for handwashing too; try and avoid laundry scent boosters which contain synthetic fragrances. Jones uses natural bleach, also known as percarbonate of soda, which brightens whites and colours. She recommends air drying (cheaper and better for your clothes, plus yet more microplastics are shed in the tumble dryer) and swapping plastic pegs for stainless steel or wooden ones (the plastic ones go brittle in the sun anyway). The bathroom 'The UK has an affinity for putting bleach down the toilet and it is so commonplace and something that I used to do, but it is so bad for the environment,' says Jones. A great alternative is citric acid, which is a disinfectant and eats away limescale. It is simple to use: 'Plunge the toilet so that the water level goes lower, then put a few scoops of citric acid in, leave it overnight, flush it in the morning and it takes away the limescale.' There is a concerning trend on TikTok for mixing bleach with other cleaning products, which creates toxic fumes. Instead, Jones makes her own multi-purpose cleaning scrub: a combination of liquid soap (the soap that you use for washing up) and bicarbonate of soda. 'It is mildly abrasive so it is great on soap scum or cleaning the glass on your shower. It is so effective and you can use it all over your house,' she says. She stores it in a glass jam jar and it has allowed her to dramatically reduce the amount of cleaning products under her sink. She also suggests replacing plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner with shampoo bars (she recommends Wild Ona and Eco Living) and buying toothpaste in aluminium tubes or glass jars (try or even in tablet form. The garden 'Starting from seed is my favourite tip, says Jones, 'as it avoids so much plastic. It's mindful and it helps you slow down.' Jones starts off her seedlings in little pots made from newspaper – all you need to do is roll the paper around a glass jar (you can use different sized jars according to the particular needs of the plants: longer, thinner ones for sweet peas, for example). Her children enjoy making the pots with her and the seedlings can be planted out into the ground inside their paper containers (seedlings in biodegradable cardboard containers that you can buy online can also be planted out in the same way). Instead of buying plant food, she suggests using nettles soaked in a bucket of water or using banana skins as a natural fertiliser – soak them in water first until they start to ferment (usually it takes a couple of days). Drain the liquid and use it to feed your roses or tomatoes. The bedroom The simplest swap in the bedroom is to switch to natural fibres when it comes to both your bedding and your mattress. Polyester sheets will shed microplastics, so cotton, linen or silk are the natural alternatives. Some of us probably haven't given a huge amount of thought to what our mattresses are made of but most contain foam made from plastic. Memory foam is made from polyurethane, a plastic derived from petroleum. Look instead for mattresses made from natural materials – for example, the British company Naturalmat makes mattresses from natural and biodegradable materials. A word of advice: Jones has not yet swapped her own mattresses for non-plastic ones because they don't yet need replacing and she knows that people rarely want second-hand mattresses. 'Sometimes you need to hang on to some of that plastic to avoid it just polluting the world,' she says, 'because there is no such thing as 'away'. If you put it in the bin, it is just going to go to landfill.'