Eco-friendly cleaning tips and zero waste guides

Cleaning Tips
How to Clean a Microwave Naturally (No Harsh Chemicals)

How to Clean a Microwave Naturally (No Harsh Chemicals)

The easiest way to clean a microwave does not involve a single spray bottle. Steam does the work. A bowl of water with vinegar or lemon, a few minutes on high, and the grease and dried-on splatters wipe away with...

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Cleaning Tips
Plastno refillable glass multi cleaner spray bottle on a kitchen counter

Homemade All-Purpose Cleaner Recipes (and When to Skip the Mixing)

Making your own all-purpose cleaner is mostly a good idea. The ingredients are cheap, they are already in most kitchens, and you skip a plastic bottle at the store. The catch is that a homemade cleaner is only as good...

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Cleaning Tips
Best Non-Toxic All-Purpose Cleaners Compared

Best Non-Toxic All-Purpose Cleaners Compared

Seven all-purpose cleaners compared on ingredients, certifications and bottle material, taken from each brand's own label.

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Sustainable Products
Gloved hands squeezing water from a worn green and yellow plastic dish sponge over a plate at the sink

Best Non-Toxic Dish Sponges Compared

Most kitchen sponges are plastic. The yellow block is polyurethane foam, the green pad bonded to it is polyester or nylon fiber, and both shed particles every time you scrub. That is the part people are trying to get away...

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Cleaning Tips
Person lifting a tied black trash bag out of a stainless steel step trash can indoors

How to Clean a Trash Can Indoors Without a Hose

A trash can gets dirty in a way most household surfaces never do. Liquid pools in the bottom, dries, and leaves a film that a new bag sits right on top of. That film is what you are actually smelling,...

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Eco Facts
Close-up of microplastics, practical ways to avoid microplastics in your home

Does Silicone Have Microplastics

Silicone is not plastic, but it is not nothing either. What it is made of, whether it sheds or leaches when heated, and how to spot cheap filled silicone.

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Cleaning Tips
Cloth wiping a black glass ceramic stove top clean

How to Clean a Glass Stove Top Without Scratching It

A glass cooktop will not stain but it scratches. The method, the two things that cause permanent damage, and why it looks streaky after you clean it.

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Cleaning Tips
How to Clean Granite and Marble Countertops (Skip the Vinegar)

How to Clean Granite and Marble Countertops (Skip the Vinegar)

Vinegar is the most recommended natural cleaner and it etches marble. What actually works on sealed granite and marble, and how to tell a stain from an etch.

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Cleaning Tips
Three bowls of white cleaning powder side by side: baking soda, washing soda and borax

Washing Soda vs Baking Soda vs Borax: Which Cleans What?

Sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate and borax look identical and behave very differently. What each one cleans, where it does not belong, and how to handle it.

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Healthy Home
Hand holding a cleaning product bottle and reading the ingredient list on the back label

Non-Toxic Cleaning Products: How to Tell Which Claims Are Real

Non-toxic is not a regulated term. Here is how to read an ingredient list, spot the gaps in a label, and confirm what a cleaning product actually contains.

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Sustainable Products
Plastno multi-surface cleaner tablet refills held in a kitchen, fragrance-free tablets that dissolve in water to make a spray

How to Make a Fragrance-Free Cleaning Spray from a Tablet

Cleaning tablets that dissolve in water sound almost too simple to work. Drop a little tablet in a bottle, add water, and you have a full spray cleaner? That is genuinely the whole system, but a few small details decide...

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Healthy Home
Sulfate-Free Cleaning: What Sulfates Are and Why We Leave Them Out

Sulfate-Free Cleaning: What Sulfates Are and Why We Leave Them Out

Sulfates show up in a lot of cleaning products, and lately a lot of shoppers are trying to avoid them without being totally sure why. The short version: sulfates are cheap, effective surfactants that can also be harsh, and there...

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Healthy Home
Plastno multi-surface cleaner tablet refills held in a kitchen, fragrance-free tablets that dissolve in water to make a spray

Why Fragrance-Free Cleaning Matters for Allergies and Asthma

If cleaning day leaves you sneezing, headachy, or a little short of breath, the cleaner is a likely suspect, and the scent is usually the culprit. Fragrance in cleaning products is one of the most common triggers for people with...

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Cleaning Tips
A reusable spray bottle being refilled at home to cut down on single-use plastic cleaner bottles

Questioning Reusable Spray Bottles When You Already Own Plastics

A reusable spray bottle sounds simple, but the decision is not always clear. You might already have a bunch of plastic cleaner bottles under your sink, and buying another bottle can feel like the opposite of low waste. In this...

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Sustainable Products
A jumble of harsh conventional cleaners and bleach crowded under a sink, the kind a non-toxic, kid- and pet-friendly routine replaces

Non-Toxic All-Purpose Cleaner for Homes with Kids and Pets

When there is a crawling baby or a dog that licks the floor in the house, "all-purpose cleaner" stops being a boring purchase. Kids and pets spend their lives on the surfaces you clean, and they put their hands and...

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Sustainable Products
Plastno fragrance-free multi-surface cleaner sprayed on a sealed stone countertop next to a plant-based sponge

How to Clean Quartz Countertops Without the Streaks

Every guide says use mild dish soap. That is what causes the streaking. The daily method that works, what damages quartz, and how to lift stains safely.

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Healthy Home
A person wiping a wooden table by hand in a bright home, cleaning without a scented spray

Fragrance-Free vs Unscented Cleaners: What's the Difference?

If you have ever bought an "unscented" cleaner expecting no smell and still caught a faint chemical whiff, you ran into one of the most confusing labels in the cleaning aisle. Unscented and fragrance-free sound like the same thing, but...

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Sustainable Products
Plastno mineral-based cleaning tablets and reusable spray bottle set out for a low-waste summer travel cleaning routine

Questioning Cleaning Subscriptions for Summer Travel Season

Summer Trips, Cleaning Subs, and a Reality Check Summer travel is great until it bumps into real life at your front door. Bags are half packed, you are hunting for that one missing sandal, and you hear the delivery truck....

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Cleaning Tips
Mineral-based cleaning sprays on a counter for small kitchens that get messy quickly

Mineral-Based Cleaning Sprays for Small Kitchens That Get Messy Quickly

A small kitchen can go from calm to chaos in one meal. One pan of pasta, a quick salad, a drink with ice, and suddenly there are splatters, crumbs, and sticky spots on every surface. When space is tight, even...

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Plastno PVA-free mineral-based cleaning tablet dissolving in a refillable water bottle

Is Polyvinyl Alcohol a Plastic? What PVA Is and Whether It's Safe

Polyvinyl alcohol is a water-soluble plastic used in laundry pods and cleaning tablets. What it is, whether it is toxic, and what the research actually says.

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Sustainable Products
Plastno TUV OK Compost HOME certified compostable trash bag in a backyard compost bin

What TUV OK Compost HOME Means for Plastno Trash Bags

When a trash bag says it is home compostable, TUV OK Compost HOME is one of the few certifications that actually backs the claim. It is the standard built specifically for backyard composting, and it is the more demanding of...

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Sustainable Products
Plastno Leaping Bunny certified cruelty-free cleaning tablet dissolving in a refillable bottle

What Leaping Bunny Certification Means for Plastno's Cleaning Tablets

If a cleaning product says cruelty-free, that is a nice thing to read on a label, but on its own the phrase is not regulated and anyone can print it. Leaping Bunny is the certification that puts a real standard...

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Sustainable Products
Plastno home compostable trash bag holding food scraps, BPI and TUV OK Compost HOME certified

What BPI Certification Means for Plastno's Compostable Trash Bags

BPI certification is one of the most recognized compost marks in North America, and it is one of the two our trash bags carry. If you have seen the BPI logo on a compostable product and wondered what it actually...

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Zero Waste Living
Plastno refillable spray bottle, mineral-based cleaning tablets, and biodegradable sponges set up as a zero waste cleaning kit for a first apartment

Zero Waste Cleaning Kits for First Apartments That Actually Get Used

Getting keys to a first apartment feels big and grown up. Then you look around and realize you own one half-dry bottle of mystery cleaner and a roll of paper towels. That was our exact setup in a tiny first...

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