Plastic-Free Personal Care: Toothpaste & Toothbrushes

how we keep our teeth plastic-free: personal zero waste toothpaste jars and miswak toothbrush sticks

Let’s talk teeth! I was a dental assistant for about a year in my youth, and I carry a bit of residual obsession with teeth and dental health with me today. That collided with my newer obsession with living without new plastic whenever possible and produced some changes around my home. As always, I’m not in any way affiliated with or profiting from any of the solutions I’m recommending here. These are my personal picks, not influenced by any cash, freebies, or other perks.

TOOTHPASTE

We make our own zero waste toothpaste. To be exact, it’s tooth powder, not paste, but “zero waste tooth powder” doesn’t rhyme and roll of the tongue the same way. Whatever you call it, it’s easy to make, easy to use, and it works. My kids like this so much, they sneak pinches of it during the day between brushing.

If you’ve ever brushed your teeth with straight baking powder, you may recoil in horror when you first read the ingredient list below. If you haven’t, take my word for it, plain baking soda works as toothpaste, but it can be a harsh and unpleasant experience for the rest of your mouth. Take a deep breath and trust in this: The salt mellows the mouth impact of straight baking soda without detracting from the scouring power (in fact, the salt adds its own cleaning oomph).

We’ve used xylitol and stevia to sweeten our toothpaste. Xylitol is my favorite because of the evidence that it can reverse tooth decay as well as inhibit it. Stevia doesn’t seem to pack the same cavity-fighting power, but at least it does not promote tooth decay. Many grocery and natural food stores with bulk bins carry both – Bring your own small jar to carry yours home for zero waste shopping. You can also find them online, but that usually involves plastic packaging.

Zero Waste Toothpaste

• 1 cup baking soda plus a bit extra, as needed
• 2 1/2 teaspoons finely ground sea salt, to taste
• 1/4 teaspoon Peppermint oil, or other flavoring oils of your choice
• Powdered xylitol or stevia to taste.
• Lidded jar or jars to store the finished toothpaste in.

1. Put 1 cup of baking soda into a small mixing bowl, then add the fine sea salt and mix well.
2. Add peppermint oil, or the extracts/oils of your choice (I like mint and lemon combined, or mint and orange, or anise by itself). Mix well.
3. Add powdered xylitol or stevia to taste. We’re still working our way through a small jar of fruit-flavored stevia powder,, and it takes 2 teaspoons of that to get my kids’ desired toothpaste sweetness. Xylitol is less sweet, so you’ll likely need to use more of that.
4. Taste and adjust as desired. If you’ve added too much salt, flavoring, or sweetness, add a bit of extra baking soda, taste again, and make any desired changes.
5. Store finished toothpaste/powder in a small jar with a tight lid. This makes enough to fill 4 4-ounce Mason jelly jars each about 3/4 full.

How to use your zero waste toothpaste: When it’s time to brush your teeth, get your toothbrush a bit damp with fresh water from the sink (shake off any big droplets), then dip the brush into the toothpaste and get busy cleaning your teeth and gums.

Our friends at Pioneering the Simple Life store theirs in a shaker and dust their brushes, but we like a nice, thick coating on ours. Because this isn’t exactly a germ-free delivery method, we each have our own wee jar of toothpaste to dip our brushes into.

TOOTHBRUSHES

We just recently started brushing with miswak sticks, which we love. Although I did not believe it until I tried it for myself, one brushing with a fresh miswak stick left my mouth feeling as clean as if I’d just spent over an hour at the dental hygienist. It was such an unexpected and exciting development, I went around for days wanting to talk about nothing else. Skeptical? This article has a great roundup of information.

We also have two Sonicare handles with a separate brush head for each of us, and we take turns using those in combination with chewing on our individual miswaks. The Sonicare system is absolutely not plastic free, but we’ve had ours for years and it makes more sense to me to keep it in use than send it to the landfill.

While Philips, the company that manufactures the Sonicare system, says on their website that “At Philips we utilize our EcoDesign process to incorporate design-for-recycling and end-of-life management into all our products.”, they follow that with a statement that passes responsibility for reuse and recycling on to individuals and their local municipalities. When I called Philips just now to ask about reuse and recycling options, they couldn’t tell me what number the plastic base, handles, and brush heads are made out of; they’ve promised to email this information to me, so I’ll share that when I get it. Regardless of municipal recycling options, there’s no getting around the fact that each Sonicare component is made of virgin plastic, and is therefore part of an open and toxic material loop.

This is another of those areas where I’m conflicted – I want clean teeth, and I want my children to grow up with as few cavities as possible (an uphill battle given the chalk-like teeth they’ve inherited from one side of their family) and I want to divest from the plastic economy. When these things all intersect and seem to be in conflict, I take a deep breath, remind myself to look at the big picture, and cut myself some slack.

We’ll keep using our zero waste toothpaste on our Sonicare brushes until the batteries finally give up, buying replacement heads as necessary and stockpiling the old ones for reuse around the house. With luck, when the handles just won’t hold a charge any more, there will be a petroleum plastic-free version we can upgrade to.

This makes me love our miswak sticks even more – They do come wrapped in plastic to keep the natural juices in each stick from drying out, but that seems like an easier packaging challenge to solve; at least the core product is a completely natural stick from a living tree, a product that comes with its own cradle-to-cradle design.

Don’t just toss out your used plastic toothbrushes – Hang onto them and check out the suggestions at Trash Backwards (and add your own) for the many ways you can reuse old toothbrushes to divert them from that one-way trip to the landfill.

Please let me know if you’ve come up with other zero waste, plastic-free dental solutions. I’d love to know what’s working for you!

Plastic-Free Personal Care: Dental Floss

our new plastic-free alternative to synthetic dental floss

DENTAL FLOSS

During my search for low impact dental floss during our most recent Month Less Plastic, I had a few simple requirements: no virgin petroleum plastic packaging, no plastic or petroleum-derived components in the floss itself, and affordable.

I checked our local natural foods market and found dental floss made from silk in a technically recyclable plastic package that’s not recyclable where I live. I was tempted to buy it since it was an improvement over the floss we’d been using that was packaged in plastic and made from nylon fibers (nylon is a synthetic product made from petroleum). Alas, it was expensive, much more per foot than what I had budgeted for floss.

Luckily, I checked one more store, our local Rite Aid drug store. There, alongside the plastic bags of plastic floss picks holding synthetic floss, and the plastic blister packages of plastic boxes holding synthetic floss, I found a cheerful paper box of The Natural Dentist Stim-U-Dent Thin Plaque Removers. The box said “can be used as an alternative or as a supplement to daily flossing.” I thought we might as well give these rather fancy toothpicks a try.

They’re mint-flavored wooden sticks with one flat side and one tapered to a point, thin enough to fit between teeth at the gum line. I tracked down the company website at home and read more: They’re made from basswood from managed US forests (although the wood is shipped to China for processing), they carry the American Dental Association Seal of Acceptance. They are “clinically proven to fight gingivitis by removing plaque from between teeth. Clinical studies support a 52% improvement in gingival health! Better than floss!” I was feeling relatively excited, could this really work? Sustainably grown, biodegradable wood plaque removers that come in entirely plastic-free, recyclable (even compostable) paper packaging, be still my plastic-free heart!

Yes, my search for plastic-free dental floss had a happy ending. Granted, I didn’t find floss, but something that works just as well, so far as I can tell. My kids love them – The directions specify that you must “moisten thoroughly in mouth”, and they adore that part, a bit of sucking on a minty pick. Yes, they’re different from floss, but so long as I help the kids with theirs (just like I helped them with their synthetic floss), we all go to bed with clean teeth, all the way ’round.

Don’t toss out those plastic boxes from your synthetic dental floss, though. Now that I don’t have them coming into my life, I’ve learned you can use them for all sorts of things, and I’m always happy to divert any I come across. Instead of sending them to your local landfill or incinerator, they make perfect cases for all sorts of things:

dental floss sewing kit - cut your thread with the metal floss trimmer on top

• Corral the bobby pins, barettes, and small hair bands in your purse in one.
• Stash your spare change, bus or subway tokens in one.
• A condom fits perfectly inside an empty dental floss box for discreet transport.
• Fill one with wooden matches and add a piece of sandpaper as a striking plate for a plastic-free alternative to single-use lighters.
• Make your own traveling sewing kit. Keep the plastic spool assembly so you can wrap thread around the spool and snip it with the metal floss cutter on top. I fit three colors of thread onto one spool, thread the ends through the top together, then pull on just the one I need. I lay needles, safety pins, and thin buttons across the bottom and balance larger buttons on top of the thread spool when I slide it back into place.

the contents of my dental floss box sewing kit - it all fits in nicely with the top latched closed

What about you? Have you found a plastic-free way to floss your teeth, perhaps one with a lower carbon footprint than mine (all that shipping wood to China and back to the US adds up)? A favorite use for empty plastic dental floss cases? Please do tell.

Full Disclosure: I am not affiliated in any way with Stim-U-Dent. I just like them and pay my own money to use them.

Pie Less Plastic

Bing cherry pie - Gluten-free, casein-free, plastic-free

In the interest of spreading the love of pie as far as possible, while keeping our collective plastic footprint as small as possible, I offer this: A very easy and very tasty recipe that works with all sorts of fruit,

Polly’s Perfect Blueberry Pie

You ought to click on that link and print yourself a copy of the recipe. Fold it and stick it in your favorite cookbook, so you’ll have it handy. It really is an amazing blueberry pie with a pat-in-the-pan crust and crumble topping.

With this recipe you will be able to eat more pie with less plastic. With this recipe, you are only minutes of work (and about an hour of baking) away from a pie. You will never need to purchase a frozen pie crust packaged in plastic again. Those finished pies displayed in their clear plastic coffins like Snow White’s apple-drugged body won’t look so appealing any more.

All of the ingredients are widely available in paper or glass packaging, plastic-free. If you have access to a bulk department, you can bring your own reusable packaging from home for a zero waste pie.

The crust recipe is so simple, even those with pie crust phobias will triumph. There is no rolling of dough, nothing that needs gentle handling. Of course, it’s not going to produce a flaky pastry crust. If you need that, go buy yourself a croissant. Then come home and bake this pie.

foraged blackberries make great pies

Use any summer fruit you like, it will most likely work – I’ve used apples, assorted berries, cherries, peaches, rhubarb, and odd combinations of all of those in the same crust with good results. I tinker around with amounts of sugar, alternate sweeteners, tapioca (balls or starch) in place of corn starch, various spices, extracts and liqueurs. I use my own gluten-free flour blend in place of wheat flour, no problem. I’ve used all sorts of non-dairy milks in the crust, and coconut oil in place of the butter on top of the fruit. Tinker away to suit your own tastes and dietary needs, pies can stand a bit of off-road travel without suffering.

strawberry rhubarb pie

You can make this pie, and it will taste good. The crust will not win you any blue ribbons, but pie is about more than crust. The magic lives in the synergy of toothsome filling and stalwart subtle crust, and this will give you enough of that to win hearts and minds.

If you’ve never made a pie because it seems too hard, if you think you need that plastic-packaged crust from the store, if you buy those finished pies in plastic clamshell tombs, now is the time to fight the power! Free yourself from the mental shackles of commercial food! Make your own pie! You can do it!

Plastic-free pie for all!

Month Less Plastic: Marshmallow Update

home made marshmallows meet their fate

At the beginning of our Month Less Plastic, I made a batch of marshmallows less plastic. That was back when we were sure summer really was going to happen. We were looking forward to long warm evenings around our fire pit, roasting marshmallows while our bat box residents flapped around above us snacking on mosquitoes. Instead, we ate most of the marshmallows in hot chocolate because it was still chilly like spring, or maybe like fall.  We saved a few of the puffy squares and found enough dry wood for an experimental roasting before the marshmallows went bad. The recipe we used says they’re good for 1 week if stored in an airtight container, and ours were closer to 10 days old when we roasted them. I think they may lose a bit of structural integrity as they age, starting to dissolve or deflate a bit.

Run! Run to the chocolate before it falls!

What we learned:

Our home made marshmallows quickly turned a beautiful toasty brown. It took mere seconds to achieve a perfect roast.

That’s a good thing, because our home made marshmallows liquefied within seconds when they met with heat from the coals.

We roasted the first round on our steel campfire forks. They slid off. We lost the first ones to the fire. We ate the second batch from our cupped hands, toasted marshmallow mousse that tasted like maple creme brulee.

We roasted the third round on wooden sticks. They slid off more slowly, allowing a few more seconds to get to the chocolate and graham crackers.

They were messy but delicious. They didn’t have the same firm mouth feel as commercial marshmallows, they were more like firm whipped cream.  That’s not a bad thing, just different. In a tasty way.

wood beats metal for roasting home made marshmallows

I’m going to make another batch next week so we can try again. This time I’ll make the marshmallows smaller and we’ll roast them while they’re fresh. This time we’ll be ready to catch them if they fall.

Month Less Plastic: DIY Dish “Soap”

DIY Dish Soap & Friends

This is even easier to mix up than the DIY Dishwasher Detergent…

It’s not really soap, and it’s not necessarily entirely plastic-free, but this will clean almost every dish in your kitchen sink.

And here is all you need…

Plastic-Free Dish “Soap”:

• Baking soda

• Essential oils. I like 10 drops each of Tea Tree and Lavender in enough baking soda to fill a 24-oz re-used marinara sauce jar

What, that’s it? Yes, that’s it. It seems diabolically simple, but really it’s heavenly. It works! It smells wonderful since you use oils you like! And it won’t dry your hands out! At least, it hasn’t dried mine out yet, and I’ve been washing dishes with this in my slacker way for the past 3 weeks.

hammer some holes in that lid

Now for the fun part. Make yourself a soap dispenser. This is a gratifying project – It’s fast and it involves hammering a nail through a lid, which is always fun. It’s like making a bug jar, but this one is for your kitchen counter.

Find a jar that fits well in your hands. Make sure there is a matching lid for your jar, a lid that fits on tightly.

Using a large nail and a hammer, poke holes all over the jar’s lid . You can get fancy and make a pattern or just go for random full distribution of holes. Hammer from the top of the lid down, so that the metal forms burrs on the side facing into the jar, not the side that will be close to your skin.

Fill the jar with baking soda, add your drops of essential oil, cover the lid with one hand and shake it well to mix.

scrubbing a dirty bowl in a dirty sink

Now, go wash some dishes. It’s best to use a few good shakes of baking soda on damp dishes. Too much water, and you’ll dilute the cleaning power of the baking soda. I set my dishes in the sink, spritz them with water, sprinkle on the soda, scrub them up, then turn the water on and give everything a good rinse.

Marvel at the way the baking soda cuts through pretty much everything. To enjoy your “soap” fully, use your hand to push some of the baking soda around a dirty pot – You’ll get to feel the schmutz give way with just a bit of pressure. Bubbles from plastic-bottled soap are pretty and all, but this cleanser has safe power that’s fun to wield; it feels good when the gunk dissolves  under your fingertips. And after you clean your dishes, you can use this same powder to clean your sink. Handy!

What about bacteria? If you have dishes involving raw chicken or some other potential bacterial hazard and you’re worried this won’t kill the nasties off, scrub the surface clean with this “soap” first, then pour equal amounts of white vinegar and hydrogen peroxide onto your dish/pot/cutting board to evenly coat the surface. Let it sit for a few minutes if you’re so inclined, then rinse it off with water. The combination of regular white vinegar and standard 3% hydrogen peroxide, when they’re stored in separate containers, kills more things, more effectively than chlorine bleach. True.

Where’s the plastic? The caps of my essential oil jars are plastic. If I can find a local store to refill them for me, that will mean no new plastic. I’m just about finished with the 2-fluid ounce bottles of each that I bought over a year ago. A little goes a long way when it comes to essential oils, but there is new plastic involved if I buy through my regular source, a local buying club. If you know how to buy essential oils plastic-free, please share! Maybe we’ll have to start making our own…That sounds complicated.

The least expensive baking soda I know of is from Costco, but it comes in plastic bags that I can’t recycle locally. Fortunately, it’s not all that expensive to buy it in the largest paper box at standard grocery stores, or from the same store’s bulk department, where I can scoop it into my own large container.

You can skip the essential oils, of course, but I love the fragrance they add. Tea Tree has a host of purported benefits (antifungal, antiviral, antibacterial, antiseptic). I just found this interesting study, and now I”m wondering if I’m adding to the habituation of bacteria to sub-lethal concentrations of Tea Tree by using so little of it. Perhaps I’ll switch to some other fragrances; I’d hate for my “soap” to be wreaking the same sort of havoc as the standard antibacterial soaps with Triclosan.

Vinegar and hydrogen peroxide are my favorite disinfectant, but I can only find hydrogen peroxide in plastic bottles. If anyone has a plastic-free source, please share!

Here’s to clean dishes, with less plastic!

this cast iron skillet was dirty; now it's clean

Month Less Plastic: DIY Dishwasher Detergent

DIY Dishwasher Detergent

So much for my nay-saying ways! I knew it was possible to make dishwasher detergent, but I was sure it wasn’t possible to make dishwasher detergent that would work in our incredibly hard well water. And I wasn’t convinced it would be possible to get the necessary ingredients without a pile of plastic packaging. I was so certain I’d be stuck buying dishwasher detergent in plastic of some sort, I didn’t even bother looking up recipes during our first Month Less Plastic last summer.

This summer, I promised myself I would confront the products I was still buying in plastic, the every day items we use up and replace on a regular basis: Dishwasher detergent, rinse aid, dish soap for the kitchen sink, hand soap for the bathrooms, shampoo and conditioner.

I tackled dishwasher detergent a couple of weeks ago, staring with a bit of online research into alternatives. I found the same basic recipe in many places, and since I had every ingredient except one already in my house, I figured I’d mix up a batch, discover that it didn’t work, and go back to my favored dishwasher tablets.

I am so happy I was mistaken.

Yes! DIY dishwasher detergent works! Even for those of us with nasty-hard water! It’s true!

Bonus: It costs much less than whatever you’re buying now, unless you’re already way ahead of me on this and make your own. This recipe comes close to filling a 1-quart Mason jar, and each dishwasher load requires just 1 teaspoon of the finished mix.

Another bonus: This is eco-friendly, and not just because there’s little plastic packaging involved; all of the ingredients are safe and natural. For more information about each ingredient, check out Planet Green’s version.

I’ve noticed that sometimes my glasses come out sparkling clear and sometimes they come out coated with a bit of a film. I’m still tinkering with that, but it seems to be related to the amount of vinegar in the rinse aid cup. If I remember to fill it for each load and keep it dialed to its highest release setting, this mixture performs as well as the fancy-shmancy plastic-wrapped but otherwise eco-friendly dishwasher tablets I’ve given up.

(See my update here – In a nutshell, if I add straight baking soda on top of 1 tsp of this DIY mix into my dishwasher’s detergent cup, my dishes are much less streaky.)

DIY Dishwasher Detergent:

1 cup washing soda

1 cup borax

1/2 cup kosher salt

1/2 to 1 cup citric acid (1/2 cup for soft water, 1 cup for hard)

Mix it all together. Store it in a jar with a nice tight lid.

Use 1 teaspoon per load.

use 1 teaspoon per load

For this to work well, you need a good rinse aid. Fortunately, that is easy to come by.

DIY Dishwasher Rinse Aid:

white vinegar

Fill your dishwasher’s rinse aid holder with plain white vinegar. Adjust your machine if possible to release the maximum amount of vinegar with each load, and refill with each load. I’m reusing the plastic bottle that my eco-friendly rinse aid came in – The squirt top makes it easy to get the vinegar mostly where I want it.

use white vinegar as your rinse aid

Now, you may be wondering where to find washing soda, borax, and citric acid in your local grocery. You should find both washing soda and borax with the laundry detergents or cleaning supplies. They’re usually tucked onto the top shelf, where the other lesser-used items are located, the ones without television advertising campaigns. And they’re usually packaged in cardboard, no plastic at all.

Citric acid can be a bit trickier. During canning season, you might be lucky to find a product called Fruit Fresh for sale near the pectin and other canning supplies. In my local stores, these things are tucked onto a shelf near the baking supplies. But Fruit Fresh comes in a plastic container, it’s a bit pricey in my store, and citric acid is not its first ingredient.

Fortunately, there is another product in pretty much every American store that has citric acid as its first ingredient: Kool-Aid unsweetened lemonade. This is a great example of just how far off my beaten track this life less plastic is taking me. I have never purchased any Kool-Aid product, for anyone in my family to consume in any way. But my rules have shifted, and I’m willing to overlook the artificial colorings and other suspect ingredients to get clean dishes without a load of new plastic.

Of course, nothing is quite perfect: Each envelope does have a hidden plastic layer, and that’s what makes this not entirely plastic-free. I think there may be a way to recycle the envelopes – I’m checking with my local disposal/recycling company about this. Perhaps it’s possible to find citric acid without any plastic packaging – So far everything I’ve found online ships in a plastic bag with more plastic tape on the shipping box. If you have a plastic-free citric acid source, please do share! But even if I’m stuck with unsweetened lemonade packets, the amount of plastic per dishwasher load is much less than with any commercial detergent.

For the record, I found my Kool-Aid on sale for 10 cents per packet, much less than the $9 1/2 cup container of Fruit Fresh. I bought all 25 lemonade packets the store had, and they measured out at just under the 1 cup the recipe calls for. That was close enough for me.

Edited to add: I’ve just learned that Central Market in Poulsbo, WA carries citric acid in their bulk department. Those of us who live nearby can bring in our own jars to fill and get ourselves all the plastic-free citric acid we desire. Radiance in Olympia, WA and Tenzing Momo in Seattle, WA might also have bulk citric acid and welcome customers who practice BYOJ shopping. Market Spice in Seattle has bulk citric acid. Many thanks to everyone who shared a citric acid tip!

Please let me know if you try this, or if you have a plastic-free or less plastic solution for dishwasher detergent. If you do mix up your own, please label it so everyone knows it’s poisonous. If you use the lemonade packets, the final product will smell good enough to eat, or mix up with some water to drink. That would be fatal, so please keep yours in a safe and secure place, away from children and adults who like to mix up lemonade. Really, keep it in a safe and secure place, properly labeled, whether or not you use the lemonade.

Beware: This smells edible but it is POISON!

Here’s to clean dishes, plastic-free!

Month Less Plastic: Yogurt in Glass

fresh yogurt in 4 oz jars

My mother made yogurt for us when I was growing up and I remember having that as an option for school lunches. Back then I hated being the only one with home-made yogurt in a plastic thermos from home, instead of the regulation peanut butter and jelly on squishy bread. Now I’m having a great time forcing my children into that same role, although these days they’re not the only ones with lunches free of corporate foods.

I stopped buying yogurt in plastic tubs during our first Month Less Plastic last summer, thinking I’d find a yogurt maker with glass containers so we could make our own. Then Liesl of Pioneering the Simple Life brought some of her cultured-in-the-jar yogurt to our first Bainbridge Barter Potluck in the Park. Miss M, my yogurt lover, pronounced it “so much better than the store yogurt!” and I knew I needed to figure out how to make my own, Liesl-style. She has a gas range and uses the heat from the pilot light, cooled down through a pot of water, to provide the heat needed for hers. Since we have an electric range, I don’t have a pilot light handy. I needed a way to heat things up without an official yogurt maker.

As my friend Christine puts it, you need a place as warm as an armpit for the cultures to turn your milk to yogurt. I tried my slow cooker as a water bath for my jars of yogurt, but it was too hot and killed my starter culture off. I tried that a second time, turning the slow cooker on for a few minutes every couple of hours, and that worked. It worked, but it was too fussy. So I used my mother’s method, heating my oven to about 100 degrees F then setting my jars inside on a tray, wrapped with clean cloth diapers to insulate them. I put my batch of would-be yogurt in the oven when I went to bed at 12:30 am, and we had fresh yogurt for breakfast at 8:30 that morning.

fresh yogurt with maple syrup

Here’s how to make your own yogurt. You’ll need these things:

High-quality fresh milk. Cow’s milk and goat’s milk work perfectly. I’ve heard that coconut, soy, almond, hemp, and other non-mammalian milks can work, too. You may need a bit of thickener for those, something like coconut flour, to make them as thick as dairy yogurt. I’ve been using non-homogenized whole milk to get the cream layer on the top that Miss M loves.

Some yogurt to provide your starter culture. You’ll need a few tablespoons per 1/2 gallon of milk. Your favorite store-bought yogurt with live cultures will work – Read the label to make sure that’s what you’ve got. Then you’ll want to save some of your first batch of home-made yogurt to start your second, and so on.

Clean wide-mouth glass jars with matching lids, any size. I love 4 oz jelly jars for kid-sized and sturdy yogurt to go; larger Mason jars are great to scoop adult servings from.

A spot as warm as an armpit.

Possibly, some clean towels or other thick fabric to insulate your jars.

yogurt-to-be, ready for insulation

Here’s what to do:

Heat some milk to scalding. I turn my uncovered pan of milk to 8 out of 10 on my stove’s dial, then hang about watching for that moment when a skin just starts to form on the surface and tiny bubbles gather around the edges. The second that happens, I turn the heat off, move the pan off the burner and leave it to cool to body temperature.

Wait, how much milk should you use? However much you’d like. You can measure the volume of the jars you’d like to fill and heat that quantity of milk, or you can just wing it and find jars to match.

Stir a few tablespoons of your starter yogurt into the cooled milk. Stir very well, so all those active cultures from the yogurt are evenly distributed in the milk. I use a generous 1/4 cup of yogurt for 1/2 gallon of milk.

Pour the milk & starter culture into your clean jars. Leave a bit of room at the top of your jar, so there’s no contact between the yogurt and the lid.

Put the lids on your jars.

Insulate your jars as necessary. Cloth diapers and towels work well for dry locations; a water bath works. too.

Place your filled jars in the warm spot and let them sit for 8 – 12 hours, or until the runny milk has turned into lovely, thick yogurt. You want a spot that’s between 80 – 100 degrees F.

yogurt-to-be, insulated and ready to be cultured in a warm oven

Here are some possible warm places:

• Set your filled jars on a rack in a pot filled to below jar level with warm water. Place this water bath next to the pilot light of your gas range. You may need to set a kettle next to the pilot light, then set your water bath pot so it’s touching the kettle, to keep the pilot light from overheating the water bath.

• Heat your oven to 100 F, then turn the oven off and turn your oven light on.  Set your jars on a tray, cover them with a thick layer of cloth, and set the whole thing into the warm oven. Leave the oven light on the whole time, and don’t forget to turn the oven’s heat off!

• Wrap your jars in an electric blanket or heating pad set on low.

• The top of your fridge, the top of your stove with the stove top light on, or next to your computer might be just the right temperature to culture yogurt if you keep the jars insulated.

• Thanks to Holly for this low energy suggestion: Stack your filled jars in a cooler next to one or two jugs filled with hot tap water. Close the cooler’s lid tightly and let your yogurt incubate in peace.

That’s it. No thermometers needed, no measuring required. People have been making yogurt since at least 2000 BCE. Get in touch with your Neolithic ancestors and do it their way, no fancy equipment required (although I admit electricity does make this a bit more predictable).

We like ours with a drizzle of real maple syrup on top. Add whatever you like to yours.

it was a tasty breakfast for Miss M

Here’s to yogurt in glass jars! No more yogurt in plastic containers!

Month Less Plastic

camping less plastic

Technically, we’re done with our 2nd Annual Month Less Plastic as of today. Since I took a bit of summer vacation from blogging during the second half of our experimental month, I’ll be catching up over the next couple of weeks. Yes, that’s right! You can look forward to exciting posts about:

Making your own yogurt!

DIY dishwasher detergent!

Soap-free dish soap in a shaker bottle!

Camping less plastic!

The incredible amount of plastic involved with getting a new roof!

A love letter to bar shampoo!

And more!

breakfast less plastic, to go

Is there something you’d like to know about living with less new plastic? Do you have any tips you’d like to share?

 

Month Less Plastic: Drink More Shrub

drink a glass of shrub

Looking for a plastic-free alternative to fizzy water and soda? Mix yourself a batch of summer fruit shrub, and you can avoid every sort of plastic that comes with commercially bottled beverages: Even glass bottles have plastic inside their caps, and some cans of soda are lined with BPA.

I wrote about the raspberry version of this drink from colonial-era America (or Jane Austen’s days, take your pick) for Sound Food, and we’ve been busy mixing up various batches since then. We have 10 pounds of organic cherries in the fridge right now, thanks to All One Family Farm, so that will be our next shrub flavor.

This is such a tasty way to bottle summer, and my kids are as happy with a glass of shrub as with their favorite fizzy drinks. I think you’ll gain style points if you serve your shrub in a salvaged glass soda bottle with a Glass Dharma straw; I’ll have to try that for myself.

For our Sound Food raspberry shrub, we macerated the fruit in vinegar first, then added honey. Here’s another way to make shrub, macerating in sugar first, then adding the vinegar. Either way works well, but I’m rather preferring the slightly different flavor that comes from macerating in sugar. We used rhubarb for this batch, but any fruit will work – The proportions of fruit:sugar:vinegar stay the same regardless of the fruit, and the directions do, too.

cut and measure your fruit

Cut your fruit to allow the juices to escape. In this case, we cut a bunch of rhubarb stalks into 1/2″ pieces. If you’re using soft berries don’t worry about cutting them, just move along to the next step.

Measure the cut fruit then place the pieces in a large glass jar.

Add the same amount of sugar as fruit. We’re using guaranteed gluten-free Sucanat these days, but you’ll get a prettier color in your finished shrub with something more refined, like raw organic sugar.

Mix the fruit and sugar well. Put some oomph into it and smash things up to kickstart the release of the fruit’s juices.

When every piece of fruit is well coated with sugar and bruised/smashed a bit, put a lid on the jar and set it in your fridge for 2 days, allowing the fruit to macerate.

Now here’s the part that I don’t have photos of: When everything is nicely sludgy and the fruit’s flavor and juices have been sucked out to mix with the sugar, remove it from the fridge. For raspberries, I let things sit about 3 days in the fridge. Rhubarb seems to taste best after 2 days, but use your own palate as your guide. When the sugar fruit mixture tastes like the very essence of the fruit you’re using, it’s time to move to the next step.

Strain the jar’s contents through a fine mesh sieve or cheesecloth into a liquid measuring container. Don’t worry if there’s a layer of sugar that sticks to the bottom of the jar, and don’t wash the jar out!

Once you know how much strained liquid you’ve got, pour it back into the sugary jar. Add an equal measure of raw apple cider vinegar and stir well.

Put the lid back on and put the jar back into the fridge. You can use it right away, but the flavor will mellow and improve with time. This will keep for months in the fridge, so there’s no rush.

glass of rhubarb shrub made with unrefined sugar

When you want a nice, tall glass of shrub, pour a bit of the vinegar syrup into a glass, then add water. Adjust to taste and drink.

Rhubarb, berries, and stone fruits all make delicious shrub. Please let me know if you try a batch!

Month Less Plastic: Personal Hygiene

shampoo, soap, toothpaste (pale pink powder at front), coconut oil, baking soda

I am from a part of the world where it’s not unusual for people to celebrate their bodies by, say, going without deodorant, eating whole cloves of fresh garlic, growing out their armpit and leg hairs regardless of gender, and adding organic essential oils to skin, hair, clothing, and whatever else they touch. There are many here who wear unfashionably clunky shoes, go without makeup, and prize fresh-from-bed hair, and I am a member of this tribe (except for a bit of thing for toenail polish). I spent my time (three years) in the “No ‘Poo Movement“, living without shampoo. I got through the first two years on baking soda and apple cider vinegar, and added in egg yolks and coconut milk during year three. Then I finally realized that my hair was looking beyond dreadful, like trampled grass in the driest summer, and I switched back to bottled shampoos. There are pockets of natural body care believers here in the Pacific Northwest, and I live in one of them, or at least a transitional pocket, in which the Great Unwashed of today live and work side-by-side with those who wear chemical antiperspirants and synthetic perfumes. There’s an approach to personal hygiene for everyone here. Here’s mine, lower plastic style:

Bar Shampoo We ran out of shampoo over the weekend, so it was time to get serious about a plastic-free refill. We’re done with things that come in plastic bottles, and a little bit of sleuthing unearthed a bar of J.R. Liggett’s Old-Fashioned Bar Shampoo. So far, so good. We wash our hair about once a week in this family, so we’ve only got one washing with our new bar shampoo to talk about so far. It worked on Miss M’s curly-curly hair, on Miss A’s straight hair, and on my whatever hair, and didn’t need a follow-up conditioner. We let our hair air-dry, then applied a tiny bit of coconut oil to the ends. If you see us around town, you can decide how you think we’re looking; I think it’s impossible to see a difference between our old plastic bottle shampooed hair and our freshly plastic-free ‘dos. It may be that a bit of vinegar rinse will be needed once in a while to remove any buildup, but that’s easy to come by sans plastic (well, except for the plastic cap on most bottles of vinegar).

Bar of Soap Nothing fancy, just a classic bar of soap for washing hands, and yet it took me a while to arrive here. This bar of soap is a big change for us, since we’ve always had a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Magic All-One liquid castile soap by each of our sinks. Alas, as much as I love Dr. B’s fair trade & organic soaps, they come in  plastic bottles (albeit 100% post consumer recycled content bottles), and our bottle ran dry last week. I looked up recipes for DIY liquid soap, but they all involved ingredients from plastic bottles. Then I remembered the most obvious solution: A simple bar of soap. Yes, it’s going to get a bit gloppy and messy, and it does require the girls to learn a new set of hand-washing skills, but I know they’ll figure it out. I’ll try to think of the eventual goo as our own plastic-free version of liquid soap. This bar, Aptera Olive Oil Soap, is made from saponified olive oil, water, and a trace of mineral salts.  It took us some time in the soap section of our local grocery store to settle on this one. There were a couple of soaps without wrappers, but they each had artificial colors and fragrances (and one came with a plastic UPC code sticker on each bar). This brand had more packaging (a paper box without any plastic wrap), but it didn’t have any of the artificial additives we strive to avoid. As an added bonus, I think it was the least expensive bar of soap in the store.

Zero Waste Toothpaste We make this ourselves. Baking soda, finely ground sea salt, peppermint oil, and some powdered tropical fruit flavored stevia drink mix. We have a little plastic tub of the drink mix, and have been using it for the past year to sweeten and flavor our toothpaste. When it runs out, which will probably happen in about a year (this stuff is concentrated!), we’ll switch to powdered xylitol from the bulk department of our grocery store and some fruit extract from a glass bottle. Stevia does not promote tooth decay, and may help inhibit it, and there’s even more evidence that xylitol can reverse tooth decay as well as inhibit it.

Want to mix up your own zero waste toothpaste? Put a cup of baking soda into a small mixing bowl, then add fine sea salt; we use a couple of teaspoons of salt to about a cup of baking soda. Mix well, then taste. Believe it or not, the salt is going to take the edge off the plain baking soda (if you’ve ever brushed with nothing but baking soda, you’ll know what I’m talking about; it can be an intense and rather unpleasant experience). You want enough salt to mellow the soda, but not so much salt that it hurts. If you’ve added too much, just pile some more baking soda in to correct the balance. Add a few drops of peppermint oil, or the extracts/oils of your choice (I like mint and lemon combined, or mint and orange, or anise by itself), and some powdered xylitol or stevia, all to taste. Don’t be scared, give this a try. Tinker around a bit and remember that you’re making this toothpaste for yourself: Make it taste the way you like it. The xylitol and stevia have high per-pound prices, but you’ll only need a tiny amount (1/4 teaspoon of pure, powdered stevia is enough to sweeten an entire rhubarb pie, for instance). When you’ve got a mix you like, store it in a small jar.

When it’s time to brush your teeth, get your toothbrush a bit damp with fresh water from the sink (shake off any big droplets), then dip the brush into the toothpaste and get busy cleaning your teeth and gums. I know other people who store this sort of toothpaste/powder in a shaker and dust their brushes, but we like a nice coating on ours. Because this isn’t exactly a germ-free delivery method, we each have our own wee jar of toothpaste to dip our brushes into. Both of my girls like this toothpaste so much, they’ll eat it straight in between brushings.

Coconut Oil or, as it’s known in our house, cocobella. I buy organic extra virgin centrifuge extracted Wilderness Family Naturals coconut oil 64 ounces at a time, in large glass jars. That’s a lot of coconut oil, and no small expense, but I use it in place of butter for casein-free baking (and I do a lot of casein-free baking, hence the large jar). Along with the baking, we have a jar just for ourselves: We use it as lip balm, all-over body and face lotion, leave-in conditioner for our hair (a light coating on the ends and damaged areas is just the thing), and a tablespoon in hot bath water makes for a very healing soak for dry skin in winter.

Plain Baking Soda Thanks to Beth Terry and her Plastic-free Living Guide at her incredible blog My Plastic-free Life, baking soda, plain and simple, is my new deodorant. I’ve been using it for years as my main household cleaner, and as a skin-soother in the girls’ bath water, but putting it on skin was a new idea to me. I’m a few days into this, so I’m not sure exactly  how effective it is, but I think it’s at least as good as, if not better than, both my beloved Weleda wild rose natural deodorant and the stick of standard, mainstream scary chemical deodorant I have stashed away for events that require a mainstream American smell (family weddings, job interviews, those sorts of high stakes occasions). The little cotton square in the photo is my DIY deodorant applicator; I’ll make a more durable powder puff when I have time, but this is working for now.

Those are our main Personal hygiene Less Plastic items. I’m sure I’m forgetting something! Oh yes, toothbrushes! And floss! We’re working on affordable plastic-free alternatives for those. So far, we have Preserve toothbrushes that are made from recycled yogurt tubs, and that can be sent back to the company for further recycling once they’re worn out. But we also use Sonicare toothbrushes, and there aren’t any plastic-free or recycled options for replacement brushes there; indeed, the whole Sonicare toothbrush is a study in electrified plastic. I once found some silk dental floss in a recyclable plastic container, but that was quite pricey. Given the way we go through dental floss, we need a big old spool of it on a cardboard core, like the bulk rolls we cut from when I was a dental assistant, but with floss made from natural fibers. Does such a think exist? Do you have other favorite plastic-free personal care items? I’d love to hear about them!