How to make your bathroom more eco-friendly

In order to try and save our planet, one bathroom at a time, we've created this short article "how to make your bathroom more eco-friendly" featuring some of the easiest and best ways you can make your bathroom more 'green'.

Fit a shower, instead of a bath

According to leading boiler brand Worcester Bosch, taking as little as a 10 minute shower is cheaper than running a bath. "A typical bath requires about 90 litres of water, split between 60 litres or so of hot water and 20 to 30 of cold."

"A normal thermostatic mixer shower head discharges about nine litres a minute, requiring about six litres of hot and three litres of cold. So, providing you shower in less than 10 minutes, it will be more economical to shower.”

Update your toilet to a dual flush system

According to sources, about 30% of the total water usaged in a typical family home is used to flush the toilet.

Most modern toilets come with a dual flush cistern as standard. If yours doesn't and you don't wish to change your whole toilet, you can update just your cistern to a dual flush. Dual flush toilets typically use between 3-4 litres for a small flush or 4-6 litres for a large flush. This is considerably lower compared to the traditional flushing systems of toilets that use a huge 13 litres per flush, everytime.

Repair or replace leaking taps

We've done a couple of rough calculations on this. If you've got a drip, say, 1 tenth of a millilitre and it drips every ten seconds, it's going to lose you about 36 millilitres an hour. If you multiply it out for the whole year it's about 315 litres a year, one or two baths full, depending on how big your bath and your drip is!. Many leaking taps simply need the washer replacing. For the price of a washer, you'd be silly not to.

Turn off the tap when brushing your teeth

This is a simple change you can easily make to your daily routine. An average running tap uses up to 9 litres of water a minute. If you're a four-person household that each brush your teeth twice a day for the recommended two minutes, you could be saving around 144 litres each day.

Choose eco-friendly products

Choosing eco-friendly products when renovating or simply upgrading your bathroom can make a massive difference. We recommend Bamboo as a material of choice for accessories and furniture, however there are plenty of options out there. Simply choosing a Bamboo bath mat over a plastic one can make a massive difference to the environment. Bamboo is a highly renewable, natural material that has antibacterial, antifungal properties and is biodegradable as opposed to plastic. Plastic can take up to 1000 years to biodegrade and is the leading cause of mass pollution all over the world. To shop our bamboo furniture and accessories, click here.

If you wish to read any more of our articles, including design tips and more facts about Bamboo, please visit here.