Tully’s Tips for Personal Pollution Prevention, Part 1

What you can do to keep your indoor spring cleaning safe!

We all know that current events are making this year’s spring cleaning absolutely necessary. Thus, your friends at Tully would like to give you a few pointers on how to protect our water while we tidy up and sanitize our homes. For this list, we will be sticking to preventative measures that you can do inside your home. There are many things that we may be doing to help keep our living space clean that may be causing our water to get dirty so sit back and relax while you check out Tully’s Tips for doing your part at home!

1. Do not pour fat from cooking or any other type of fat, oil, or grease down the sink. Fat solidifies when it cools which can clog water systems and cause harm to ecosystems. Keep a “fat jar” under the sink to collect the fat and discard it with the solid waste when full.

2. Avoid using a garbage disposal. We know that they exist and they may be convenient, but it is best to keep solid wastes solid and throw food waste in the trash can or make a compost pile from your scraps.

3. It is recommended that you use the minimum amount of detergent and/or bleach when you are washing clothes or dishes. This simply reduces the amount of not-so-great things that can get into the water supply. Try to use only phosphate-free soaps and detergents. Some environmentally friendly ones are:

a. Branch Basics

b. ECOS

4. Do not dispose of household chemicals or cleaning agents down the sink, toilet, or outside. The best way to dispose of these products is to use them or give them to someone who can; however if this cannot be done then check the label to see their disposal instructions or take them to a chemical disposal center.

5. Do not use the toilet as a trash can. Most tissues, wrappers, dust cloths, and other paper goods should be properly discarded in a wastebasket. The fiber-reinforced cleaning products such as disinfectant wipes or baby wipes (even if they say flushable) that have become popular should never be discarded in the toilet. These products can also cause large blockages that can end up ruining entire water systems.

6. Do not flush pills, liquid or powder medications or drugs down the toilet. The DEA holds a national drug take back day two days a year, one in mid-April (due to COVID-19 this date has been postponed as of now) and one in mid-October.

We hope that this list gives you some ideas on how you can help prevent water pollution! Make sure you take a look at part 2 of this topic - Tully’s Tips for Personal Pollution Prevention, Part 2