A dishwashing routine without plastic bottles

A household gets through several bottles of dish liquid a year, and in packaging studies the bottle is a meaningful share of the product's footprint — refill and concentrate formats cut it sharply. Pump dispensers are mixed-material units that usually land in residue. A block of solid dish soap, used with a wooden brush, replaces the lot — and dries to nothing between washes, so it does not turn into a slime trap.

The setup

• A solid dish soap block in a small ceramic dish — drains, dries, lasts months.
• A wooden-handled brush with a replaceable plant-fibre head. Compostable at end of life.
• A linen or cotton tea towel for drying. Skip the microfibre — it sheds plastic in every wash.

If you have a dishwasher

Dishwasher tablets in a cardboard box, or refillable powder, both beat individually-wrapped tablets on packaging and per-wash cost. The plastic-film tablets are not water-soluble in any meaningful sense — they end up as microplastic in the wastewater stream.

“The most sustainable kitchen routine is the one that asks nothing extra of you on a tired Tuesday. Set it up once and let the materials do the work.”