The Worst Eco-Friendly Products: Every Trash Purchase I’ve Made

Hey earth muffins! I’ve been on my eco-journey since 2018, which means I have made a lot of swaps in my daily routine. Today, I thought it would be fun to go through the products that I stopped using… Either because they “suck” or they weren’t necessary to my life. This is not to say that all of these products don’t work or aren’t sustainable. I just had a particular reason why they weren’t essential to my daily routine. For each product, I will explain why I bought it and then why I stopped. Let’s jump right into the worst eco-friendly products I have purchased so far! 🎉

Solar Phone Charger

One of the first purchases I made when I went green was a solar phone charger off of Ebay. I wrote a whole post about it a long time ago. I thought it would be such a good idea to charge my phone using solar… And in theory it was. But, during my grad school year my apartment got absolutely no direct sunlight. Plus, I was using an iPhone 6 that was about 6 years old. The battery life was absolutely terrible, so the phone charger would never quite charge it as much as I needed. Now that I have a new phone and sunlight in my apartment, I just haven’t reached for the charger still. I feel like this would be a great product if you were a hiker and needed a quick charge… Just not too practical for me right now. Definitely a product I regret buying!

The Eco Egg

I was gifted an Eco Egg (affiliate link) awhile back to help make my laundry routine zero waste. This egg can be filled with little spheres of natural laundry detergent. Once you use the egg for about 70 washes, you can replace the spheres in the center. It is definitely a great way to minimize waste in the laundry room, as it avoids plastic bottles! When I was using this product I think it worked great, so it doesn’t fall into the “worst eco-friendly products” category. But, once I moved in with my boyfriend we switched to using Tide for sensitive skin. My boyfriend and I do our laundry together, as we only have full loads if we put our clothes in the same washer. He has very sensitive skin, so I relented and gave up the Eco Egg (for now).

Metal Straws

When I went green, I never bought any metal or glass straws because I don’t really use straws that much. I attribute this to not drinking coffee! 😂 However, when I started my job back in September, the company I work for sent me a set of metal straws. Part of me was excited about this, but, to be honest, I barely ever use them. They sit in my utensil drawer and collect dust 99.99% of the time. I am sure eco-friendly straws are well loved by many low wasters, but they just aren’t necessary to my life!

JR Liggett Shampoo Bar

I regret buying this shampoo bar (affiliate link) because it was absolutely horrible to my hair. If you are interested in why I thought this, check out the full review of the product! Looking at the reviews on Amazon, it seems that people either love or hate this bar. I fall into the latter for sure. I have a lot of success with Lush shampoo bars, so I probably should have just stuck with those when I was looking for a new bar. 😕 You live and you learn!

Lena Menstrual Cup

Using a menstrual cup is an amazing way to zero waste your period. However, I definitely underestimated the fact that it might take you a few tries to find the menstrual cup that works best for your body. For me, the Lena cup was a bad first choice, which is why it makes it on this worst eco-friendly products list. I was not a huge fan of how firm the silicone was, as it made my cramps worse during that time of the month. Check out my full review of the Lena cup for other reasons I jumped ship to another menstrual cup!

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