The other day, when a friend and I were chatting about the catastrophic heat wave out west, the talk turned naturally to more general environmental concerns. She’s a scientist and loves the ocean. “I’ve been thinking for years,” she said, frowning, “that I should avoid single-use plastics. So many of them are getting dumped in the ocean. I’ve just never had the time to do the research. Now that I’m retired, I guess I really need to do that.” Then she sighed.
I agreed with both the sentiment and the sigh. Most pollution is industrial, on a scale that dwarfs our private consumer choices. And my friend is on a tight budget, so the relative expense makes these niche products prohibitive (at least for the time being). Yet companies won’t make better choices if our buying patterns don’t spur them to do so. These days, I’m retired and not on a super-tight budget. So (*sigh*) I guess it really is time to think a little about the consumer choices I’m making.
Like most of us, I’ve made some small changes in the past few years. I’ve switched to reusable grocery bags and reusable mesh produce bags. I recycle cans, bottles, cardboard, and paper. I even wash and re-use plastic baggies. (Washing them always makes me think of a cartoon sent to me by an skeptical colleague. It shows a woman pinning baggies to a clothesline, with the caption “Yuppie guilt meets Yankee thrift.”) I tried bamboo paper towels, with limited success. To cut down on single-use bottled water, we use water bottles—the thermos kind, mostly, since the water stays cool and tastes great—and bought a machine to make seltzer. And I also…
Well, actually, that’s about it. Our house doesn’t have solar panels. (We live deep in the woods, with enough tree cover that they probably don’t make sense.) I compost in Nova Scotia, where the county collects compost every two weeks, but not here in the US. (Figuring out how to do that with lots of bears, raccoons, and coyotes around will take some research.) Also, my household’s carbon footprint is probably more or less average for an American family’s—which means large, by world standards—what with the car, the refrigerator, the dryer, the air conditioner, some airplane travel…. Giving up the car or our household appliances would be personally unpleasant, with an infinitesimally small gain for the environment. So, that’s not happening, at least not any time soon.
Yet the phrase “single-use plastics” reverberates in my mind. Everywhere I turn, for the past few days, I’ve been aware of things wrapped in plastic or bottled in plastic. Are there some small, not-too-painful, not-too-expensive changes we could make?
Probably.
How about laundry detergent? Like most people, I usually buy it in big plastic jugs. I recycle them, but who knows what happens to them once they get to the recycling station? I’ve seen ads, though, for laundry detergent in thin sheets packed in cardboard. I was thinking of trying the sheets out anyway, to pack for Italy. (I vividly remember the agony of scouring Italian stores for unscented detergent.) So, I got on Google, typed in “laundry detergent sheets,” and found several options. I’ve seen some complaints about the sheets not completely dissolving in the wash; other people love them. I ordered a package from TruEarth because they emphasized their fragrance-free, sensitive-skin option. We shall see.
How about hair products? Several companies sell shampoo and conditioner bars. I checked out two companies that got mentioned on several sites: The Earthling Company and Ethique. The Earthling Company sells only one type of shampoo and conditioner, in several scents. (They claim it’s gentle enough for colored hair.) Ethique makes several types—for dry, oily, or dandruffy hair—and weren’t entirely clear about an unscented option (though I think I found one). Both companies claim that bars of shampoo and conditioner last longer than bottles do. Since test packs were not particularly expensive, so I ordered small amounts from both companies. Again, we shall see.
Gove Collaborative, which my stepdaughter uses, sells such products. So does Zero Waste (things like bamboo straws, ecologically certified sponges, etc.), But laundry detergent and hair bars are enough for this round. If the products I ordered work okay, I’ll pass the info along.
And you—if you’ve tried the alternatives to packing tape, baggies, or whatever else has swum into your field of vision, I’d love to hear what you’ve tried! Let’s compare notes on our experiments…
Composting is absolutely one of the best things you can do. We live adjacent to a conservation area with many bears so we also cannot compost in our yard. We bought a sticker for our town’s transfer station and take our recycling, trash and compost there. Check with your town! We stash our compost in our garage, in a large plastic bucket from Lowe’s, and drop it off very 7 – 10 days. So easy – and so worthwhile.
I’ll check — thanks for the tip!
I’m looking forward to reading about your results after you’ve had a chance to try these products! We also use cloth grocery bags and mesh produce bags, recycle everything we can, compost, and avoid waste as much as possible. But, those single-use plastic products are tough to ditch completely.
REALLY tough! I already know the laundry detergent sheets are a success. The shampoo and conditioner bars have required some getting used to, so I’m less certain about how I’ll feel about those over time. They do seem to get my hair cleaned and conditioned okay.
Our local health food store has laundry detergent and dish detergent in bulk, so we fill up empty bottles of both (I think they’re both scented). We also now buy our milk in returnable glass bottles. It helps to reduce our consumption, but nevertheless each week our recycling bins are full of plastic….
Yes, everywhere I look now, I see plastic — and most of it single-use! I wish I could get lactose-free milk in bottles, but at least it’s packaged in waxed cardboard rather than actual plastic. I’d love to get dishwashing detergent from a bulk dispenser.
Hi Nancy! I think it is very important for all of us to ask and remind ourselves that there is more that we can do to help the environment. The biggest thing we have done is “rightsized” (downsized) our home to a size more compatible with the two of us, we have solar on our house so our electricity usage is very low, desert landscaping with very low water usage, and other home energy efficiencies that all help. I do try to cut back on household plastic but do recycle it (at least that’s what our city offers) all the time. Oh, and we bought reusable straws that have probably saved a cazillion straws from Starbucks in the last 3-4 years. We tried composting but where we live in the desert it didn’t work that well. Still, I’m always on the lookout for what we can do because it really is important. Thanks for bringing up the issue. ~Kathy