5 Easy Zero Waste Hacks

Kameko Grant, founder of the So Good General Store, shares her 5 fave zero waste hacks with us. Wanderlust is happy to feature this plant-powered,  female-founded, Black-owned company as part of our impact series during #BlackHistoryMonth. 

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When you’re looking to free up your home from toxins, it pays to keep it homegrown and lean into either making cleaning products yourself, or buying from non-commercial brands. When Kameko Grant was looking for more earth-friendly products for her home, she wanted to level the playing field and divest from large corporations’ products towards businesses whose people and missions she could get behind, so she started the So Good General Store. “All the brands we carry are BIPOC owned and operated, all natural, devoid of harsh chemicals and are striving to be more and more sustainable by the day,” she says.

We asked her for her 5 most-used zero waste hacks around her home, and she delivered.

Buy in bulk and reuse your glass jars

I’m kind of a glass jar hoarder. It’s such a better option than constantly buying new glass or plastic containers and such an easy swap out. I try to buy all my herbs, seeds, nuts, loose leaf teas, etc., in bulk and then decant into jars. That way I can always see what I have on hand and use it up before they go bad. Yea, I’m that mom with a mason jar full of snacks at the park .

Use natural butt spray and cloth wipes instead of disposables

 

So Good General Store’s ‘Butt, Spray’ is all natural, gentle on babies and my kiddo loves the scent! Using reusable cloth wipes is actually so much easier than you think, not to mention a major improvement on traditional baby wipes since most of those contain plastic fibers that won’t biodegrade, like ever. Also? Butt, Spray is amazing on any body parts as a moisturizing toner! I use it on my face daily.

Using cloth and/or compostable diapers

Did you know the first conventional ‘disposable’ diaper ever created is still out there somewhere in a landfill? Every diaper ever thrown away is still on the planet—you do the math. I made the switch to cloth diapers with my third baby. There are so many cute, sustainable options out there now! Cloth diapers combined with Elimination Communication (basically taking babies to the potty) and this rad company Dyper, that makes compostable bamboo diapers (they even have a pick up service!) has made our diapering footprint so much smaller!

Use sustainable laundry sheets and make sure your detergent is concentrated

I found these 2 amazing BIPOC-owned brands that make sustainable laundry detergent and immediately knew I had to not only use them at home but carry them in the So Good General Store trailer! Kind Laundry sheets skip the plastic jug for cardboard packaging and have these simple, dissolvable laundry sheets with no harsh toxins. PurHome has this awesome laundry detergent concentrate that is free from toxic chemicals, perfumes, dyes etc. Being concentrated you need to use way less and there’s a smaller carbon footprint.

Replace traditional cleaners with eco-concentrates

Since we inhale and absorb all the cleaning products we use every day and so do your little ones, I formulated So Good’s cleaning concentrates to be extremely effective while still completely non-toxic, smell amazing using only essential oils and packaged in glass eliminating one use plastic. They also reduce carbon emissions and water waste by being a ‘refill at home’ concentrate. If you’d like your home to be sparkling clean and smell like a spa instead of a doctor’s office to boot, this is a THE switch to make.