This post has been a long time in coming, as I've struggled (for years) to find dishwashing alternatives which work well and are eco friendly.
Here are the swaps I've gradually made (waiting until each bit of existing dishwashing paraphernalia was at the end of its usable life) which have been successful in my household...
The 'If You Care' brand washing up gloves are durable, a lovely bright green colour, made from ethically-sourced materials, are packaged in recycled cardboard and BEST OF ALL can be cut up into teeny-tiny bits with scissors (once they wear out) and added to your home compost! Yippee! The only slight drawback is that their sizing comes up small, so I suggest ordering a size bigger than the washing up gloves you usually wear.
I really LOVE 'Splosh' washing up liquid. Splosh products work amazingly (I use the 'lime' washing up liquid), cut plastic dramatically and are shipped from Wales in cardboard packaging. The customer service is excellent too. Initially you buy a for-life bottle, then ever-after refill it. The regular-sized refills handily fit through the letterbox in an outer cardboard packet (you can also now get super-sized refills delivered in a bigger cardboard box). The refill of concentrated washing up liquid is in a plastic pouch (containing enough product to refill the bottle 3x) and needs to be diluted before use, with warm tap water. The plastic pouches can be saved up and eight-at-a-time posted back to Splosh to be turned into plastic products, such as powder scoops and ice scrapers. A carefully thought-out closed-loop recycling system. But still I needed to find a way to make eco washing up liquid more affordable and longer lasting. Then a brainwave. I now use Splosh washing up liquid more diluted - I use 1/4 of the concentrate amount suggested - in a SPRAY BOTTLE, so one pouch of refill fills up the bottle 12x, costing me just over £1 per litre. Genius! Using a spray bottle dramatically cuts down on the amount of washing up liquid used and actually makes it much easier and quicker to use. I use an old Splosh Glass Cleaner bottle (with the filter-end removed from the inner straw) - I don't have time to actually polish glass or shiny things nowadays, so the glass cleaner bottle was going spare. Splosh bottles are extremely well made and long lasting - if a Splosh bottle does break / fail then they happily send you a replacement empty bottle for free.
Splosh washing up liquid is great for window cleaning (I like to do a full window clean before I put up the Christmas lights in late November and another full window clean in late Spring - a 'Spring Clean'). In between that the windows get quite finger-print-and-nose-mark stained, but I can live with that. With window cleaning (interior I mean - windows you can reach safely) 'less is best' - meaning that the less product you put onto the glass, the less wiping you have to do to get the product off again!
The photo is b&w because my very-often-reused bottles are rather grimy and not very photogenic!
You do need something to cut through the grease and encourage shine - a clean, damp natural-fibre cloth (I use Ecoegg bamboo reusable kitchen roll sheets) with a dab of washing up liquid and a dab of white vinegar (available from refill stores) works brilliantly. Rinse and re-soap/re-vinegar the cloth once dirty. Then whilst the glass is still damp, use a sheet of scrunched up newspaper to dry the window - something magical about the newsprint ink helps to give a streak-free finish. The more you use the same bit of newspaper sheet the softer it gets and the better it dries the window - for some reason!?! Never wash your windows in bright sunshine or they will dry streaky before you have chance to newspaper-ball dry them.
Now to dish brushes. Oh dear. I have tried several bamboo / wooden dish brushes over the years, but they have all either quickly gone mouldy or the handle itself has snapped. I am very fastidious about hanging up any washing up brush to dry in between uses, so it isn't as if the brushes have been left submerged in water and mistreated. I have drawn the same conclusion as that about toilet brushes and tooth brushes - wood / bamboo is not a durable / suitable material for items which are regularly wet. So I switched to this recycled plastic dish brush by 'Eco Force' which has replaceable brush heads (which click in easily yet securely). This reduces the amount of plastic which is thrown away once the bristles are unusable (as the handle is infinitely reusable). As the dish brush and head are made from plastic (happily 80% recycled plastic) they actually last ages and ages. Annoyingly the brush and the replacement heads are currently OUT OF STOCK at Ethical Superstore (where I purchased mine). There are sellers offering them on Ebay, but this risks getting your lovely eco product in reams of plastic packaging. Sigh.
*Update* I have since found out about the 'Greener Cleaner' brand (why didn't I come up with that name!?) - a company which produces its dish brushes from 50% wood pulp and 50% recycled plastic, so not perfect but better than 100% virgin plastic. Ocado sells this beautiful turquoise version, they are also available in cream from Ethical Superstore. I wish they would develop a replaceable dish-brush head option, maybe I will email them with that idea!
Microfibre kitchen cloths (e.g. blue J-Cloths) shed microplastic particles whenever you use them and whenever you wash them. So I had to hunt out some good quality, quick-drying cotton alternatives. Most cotton dishcloths are very thick and take too long to dry (so become musty when hung up by the sink - if they are lucky enough to be hung up at all!) The rainbow cotton kitchen cloths from Marley's Monsters (available from Peace With The Wild) are made in the USA (which certainly isn't local to me) but are so utterly gorgeous that I will use them and love them for years and years. They are pricey at £20 for 12 - luckily I was given them as a gift. The cloth bag they live in is an ancient, re-purposed Early Learning Centre wooden-block-holder bag. When I'm swapping to eco friendly alternatives, being beautiful and useful and practical and long-lasting are important considerations for me, alongside the purely eco and ethical credentials too.
This LoofCo coconut husk pan scrubber works remarkably well, without scratching pans and it doesn't (unlike scrubbing brushes) get gunk trapped in it- it is easily rinsed and it includes a string to hang it up to dry in between uses. It's made from a natural waste by-product and can be composted once it has come to the end of its useful life.
You can make a dish-cloth scrubber ('tawashi sponge') out of an old sock or two! Old clothing which is beyond repair or wear can be donated to charity shops (or placed into the clothes recycling containers found in car parks) as long as the unusable items are clearly labelled in a bag as 'rags' - the charities are able to sell on rags to companies who use the material to stuff furniture and such like. But any past-it socks can be upcycled by being cut up and woven into a kitchen dish-cloth scrubber. I watched this video by Brut Nature (made in 2019) to learn how to make a tawashi sponge. My own photo-instructions and written-instructions are below...
A. The first time you make one, use two different coloured beyond-repair socks, so you can see which bit of weaving is which. It works best if the socks are the same size and thickness, i.e. both thin cotton or both thick sports socks.
B. Use each sock to cut 5 circular strips (the strips need to be about 1cm wide each).
C. Get 20 clothes pegs and clip them around a square plastic tupperware-style tub (5 pegs per side), the tub I used was 14cm square in size.
D. Hook 5 of the sock pieces (white in the example) between the top and bottom pegs, to make 5 vertical pairs of stretched (white) loops. Make sure they ARE NOT twisted.
E. Turn the tub 90 degrees (a quarter turn) it doesn't matter which way.
F. Hook the next piece of sock (black this time) around the top left peg.
G. Weave this piece of (black) sock from top to bottom, straight down, passing OVER the first (white) loop pair you come to, passing UNDER the next (white) pair, passing OVER the next (white) pair and passing UNDER the next (white) pair and passing OVER the final (white) loop pair, then hook to secure over the peg. Again, check that NO loops are twisted.
H. Hook the second (black) piece of sock around the next top peg along. This time you start to weave passing (the black sock loop) UNDER the first (white) pair, then OVER, then UNDER, then OVER and then UNDER the final (white) loop pair.
I. Repeat with the 3rd, 4th and 5th pieces of remaining (black) sock. Always ensuring that the weaving alternates between being OVER or UNDER compared to the weaving you have just done. Once complete, look at the weaving you have done so far, to make sure the under-over pattern has been followed correctly. If it hasn't then go back and correct it before moving on.
J. Now you are ready to gradually remove the pegs. Unhook a loop from a peg at one of the corners and hook it round your finger instead, I started with a white loop.
K. This unhooked (white) loop needs something (other than your finger) to keep it tensioned. So unhook a loop next to it (a black one this time) and pass this second loop (which is white) through the first (black) loop. Let go of the first (white) loop but keep hold of the new (black) loop.
L. Now this (black) loop needs something (other than your finger) to keep it tensioned, so unhook the next loop along (another black loop) and hook this new (black) loop through the (black) loop you are already holding. Now you can let go of the (black) loop you were originally holding, but DO hold on to the new (black) loop.
M. Repeat this 'unhooking and securing with the neighbouring loop' procedure until you get all the way around your 'loom' - the final loop just needs a sharp tug to tighten it as it will be left sticking out to act as a hanger (so your dish scrubber can drip dry).
N. Keep your dish scrubber cleanly rinsed, squeezed out and hung up when not in use.
O. It can go in the washing machine every few days to keep it clean and fresh, so it's a good idea to make a few of these, so there is always a clean one ready to use hanging by the sink.
***Once you have mastered this weaving yourself , making a tawashi sponge is a really good recycling / upcycling activity to teach to kids***