10 ways to have a more eco-friendly bathroom

Making small changes to your habits can be a simple way to cut your carbon footprint. 

Our daily bathroom habits use up water and energy, which means there are ways to lessen their impact on the planet and your bills. That's before you even consider the amount of plastic and chemical products that go into toiletries that end up in our waterways.

Here are some relatively low-effort ways to get started. Why not try introducing some of them into your daily routine?

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1. Cut your time in the shower

According to the Energy Savings Trust, showers are the biggest use of water in the house – accounting for around 25%.

Thames Water calculates that taking two minutes off the average 10-minute shower can save £73 on water and energy bills a year and 20 litres of water per shower.

To help you shorten your showers, you can buy a shower timer. These can be either simple egg-timer style or digital devices. You can pick these up online for less than £5.

Baths tend to use more water and energy than showers, though this does depend on how long your shower is. Power showers can also use a lot of water rapidly.

Read more: how to reduce the cost of having a shower

2. Install water-saving devices in your bathroom

As well as shower timers, there are a number of more integrated ways to make sure your bathroom fittings are water and energy efficient. 

Water-saving shower heads

Consider fitting a water-saving shower head, which will control the flow and spray pattern of the water to give the impression of a powerful shower while using water wisely. You can't use them with electric showers.

Products with the Unified Water label

Keep an eye out for the Unified Water Label when buying new bathroom fixtures and fittings. The Unified Water Label is a voluntary labelling scheme, developed by the European bathroom industry, to help consumers across Europe and the UK choose water-saving products more easily. 

You can find this label on shower parts, taps, toilets, baths, flow regulators and other bathroom products. The Unified Water Label has its own online shop. 

Here's how to read a Unified Water Label:

Dual-flush toilets 

If you're refurbishing your bathroom, consider replacing your single flush toilet with a dual-flush toilet. 

The UWLA (Unified Water Label Association) estimates that 80% of the time you'll only need to use the shorter flush, saving, on average, up to three litres per flush.

If you don’t have dual flush, you could consider a water hippo. This is a plastic bag that opens up into a box and sits in the toilet cistern to save water every time the toilet is flushed.

Fix dripping taps and leaking toilets promptly

A single dripping tap wastes around 5,500 litres of water a year, according to Water UK.

Waterwise UK says that a leaky toilet can waste up to 400 litres of water a day – enough to fill two bathtubs.

Find out more about keeping your bathroom in good shape and avoiding small problems escalating into bigger ones

If you can't fix the leak yourself, your water company may do it for you. 

Or, you can find a reputable plumber near you using our Trusted Traders search:

3. Make your hot water system more efficient

The Energy Savings Trust estimates that around 12% of the average heating bill goes towards to heating water. 

If you have a combi boiler, turn off the pre-heat function if it has one. This function ensures you always have hot water at the ready, which is convenient but not efficient as it means your boiler is always working. Turning this function off means that the boiler will only ignite to warm water once the tap is opened. It will take a little longer for hot water to get through to your taps, but you'll save energy by not keeping the boiler preheated. 

If you have a combi boiler and you find the hot water in your taps is too scalding to use (ie you often have to mix in cold), you can save energy by reducing the temperature your combi boiler heats hot water to in its settings, so you're using less energy to heat it up. This is only appropriate if you have a combi boiler that heats water on demand rather than a hot water tank, as stored hot water needs to reach a certain temperature to avoid the risk of Legionnella growth.

If you do have a hot water tank, make sure it's well insulated, especially if it's old. Modern hot water tanks will already have insulation. Less heat loss from your hot water tank means you spend less money heating water up, and your hot water stays hotter for longer. You can buy a hot water tank jacket for as little as £20 and fit it yourself. 

Find out more about how boiler controls can save you money

4. Switch toilet roll brands, and use less of it

Unsustainable forestry is a major cause of deforestation, leading to biodiversity loss, soil erosion, species extinction and ecosystem disruptions.

The WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature, formerly World Wildlife Fund) says that the biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture, but growing demand for wood and timber is also a big threat to the world’s forests. According to the WWF, with demand for paper products increasing, global production could double by 2050. 

Using virgin wood for paper we use so fleetingly isn't ideal. Recycled toilet paper is typically a more sustainable material.

According to the Environmental Paper Network’s calculator, recycled paper has approximately one third of the greenhouse gas emissions of virgin paper and around half the water use – and, of course, it doesn’t require any new wood.

Or you could install either a standalone bidet, or a handheld bidet attachment to your toilet, also called a bidet shower. While most people in the UK default to toilet roll, many people across the world use water instead. 

Read more about how to buy more sustainable toilet paper

5. Minimise wet wipe use and never flush them

They might be convenient, but wet wipes should be avoided as much as possible. Many dermatologists and beauty experts say they're not great for your skin anyway, leading to dehydration in the long-term. 

While wet wipes containing plastic have been phased out, the plastic-free options can still cause blockages and are single-use, which creates a lot of waste.

Plenty of beauty brands make reusable make-up wipes that can be washed over and over. It's also easy to make your own.

Above all, don't flush make-up wipes down the toilet, where they can end up stuck in the sewage network as fatbergs, clogging our sewage systems. 

Putting them in the bin is better; avoiding them (and single-use cotton balls, too) entirely is best. 

Find out more: about buying water-friendly products

6. Consider the chemicals in your beauty and cleaning products

There are certain chemicals that can do more damage than others if they end up down the drain. These include parabens (found in around 90% of cosmetic products), triclosan, phthalates – mainly used for fragrance, phosphates (these have largely disappeared from UK products now) and PFAS/PFCs.

A product being ‘natural’ doesn’t mean it won’t contain harmful ingredients, but products that claim to be both naturally-derived and free of the chemicals above are usually a good starting point. 

Even better, look for organic certification such as COSMOS or NATRUE, or the Soil Association label. As organic certification will mean that ingredients have to biodegrade within a certain time frame.

Discover which bathroom cleaning sprays get our Eco Buy recommendation

7. Buy refills and bulk purchase

Even if you're carefully recycling everything you can, many toiletries come in complex containers that aren't easily recyclable: metal spring pumps in bottles of hand soap, for example. 

The complexities involved in recycling mean that we should all be reducing and reusing our plastics, where possible, before relying on recycling. 

There's also the issue of the carbon emissions associated with transport. The shape of some toiletry containers leads to wasted space in the trucks transporting them. Water weight is another factor impacting transport emissions – cleaning products and toiletries are heavy, which means more energy is used moving them around the world. 

All of this adds up to make it hard for people at home to clearly determine what's best to buy. Consider a plastic refill pouch: it might be harder to recycle, but it weighs less than a bottle with a rigid plastic structure, and takes up less lorry space during transportation; overall, this means pouches tend to be better when you look at the whole life cycle of the product and its environmental impact.

Refillables tend to be more efficient (and more cost effective to buy) than their single-use equivalents. Buying a large bottle of shampoo or shower gel and decanting it into a smaller bottle to use in the shower could save you money, and significantly cut back your plastic use.

We've looked in depth at how to shop for refillable toiletries and avoid common pitfalls that might undermine your environmental efforts

8. Use solid soap and shampoo bars

Even better than recyclable plastic containers of any size, try switching away from liquid toiletries to a packaging-free solid bar or a bar wrapped in easily recyclable paper or cardboard.

Many popular brands now make these, so you'll find them easily in supermarkets, chemists and zero-waste shops as well as online. For example, in 2023, 57% of all products Lush sold were 'naked'.

Green brands: what to look out for to make sustainable choices

9. Reduce the amount of toiletries you're using

For any frequently used and thrown-away product, the best thing to do, before you get to the reusing or recycling stage, is to reduce how much you buy and use in the first place. 

Think carefully about whether you need the latest ‘must-have’ product. The beauty industry is notorious for encouraging overconsumption by tapping into our insecurities in promising to solve problems we didn't even know we had to worry about. 

If you're having a grand clear-out of toiletries you no longer want, don't just sweep them into the bin if there's a decent amount left in them. 

There are several charities that will accept toiletries including Toiletries Amnesty, an NGO supporting homeless shelters and hostels, women's refuges, mental health services, food banks, refugee support services and other community groups. Part-used items are fine, so long as they're at least half full and in date (no used razors or toothbrushes). 

Use the Toiletries Amnesty directory to find your nearest donation point

10. Switch to reusable menstrual products

200,000 tonnes of menstrual products go to landfill every year, says City to Sea, the charity behind the Plastic-Free Periods campaign. Switching to reusables means more washing, but makes a significant difference across your lifetime and could well save you money.

A word of warning here: we have found that some reusable menstrual products contain silver. Experts we spoke to suggest silver is at best an unnecessary extra, and at worst may have health implications that are as yet unknown.

Silver is sometimes declared on the packaging: if it isn’t, check the manufacturer’s website, as sometimes this information is buried. If in doubt, ask, or opt for a brand that specifically says it doesn’t use silver.

Read more about our investigation into silver in period pants

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