Under our sink we keep a variety of cleaning products for different uses and all are in single use plastic bottles.

(OK its not usually that tidy under our sink!).

Our practice up to now has been to dispose of these bottles even though they were still perfectly functional, because I had no other use for them.

In my drive to reduce the plastic that we are contributing to recycling and landfill this has to change so I looked for alternatives. I found 2.

The first is at the zero waste shop we found in town where you can take your empty bottles to re-fill. The downside is that this costs more than twice the price of our usual buys in the supermarket. So this is not a realistic option for anyone on a budget.

The second is more promising. I found a company called Ocean Saver

They supply dissolvable cleaning pods. The idea is you dissolve one of their pods in 750ml of water in your empty cleaning bottles, and you\’re away.

So I ordered a variety pack, although they have other combinations. The variety pack comes with 4 floor cleaning pods (which can make 4 buckets of cleaner) and one each of bathroom, kitchen, glass and multi purpose pods, but they\’re all basically the same thing.

I liked the price, I paid £8.50 for the 8 pod pack and they were delivered by Hermes at no extra cost (surely that was a mistake).

They arrived in a cardboard box, no plastic wrapping, and neatly layed out under perforated flaps.

They also came with their own labels with everything you need to know about each product.

So, we are all set to re-use our cleaning bottles, and at no extra £££s. Simples.