Plastics: the Never Ending Story

I am inspired on this next posting by my friend Jan, who lives in London and just recently got back from an All-Girls Scientific Expedition on board the SV Sea Dragon which sailed across the South Atlantic Ocean from Senegal to Brazil via Ascension Island to study plastics in the ocean. I got to thinking about my own contributions to the plastic problem, and am trying to find ways to reduce my usage.

Take a look around you: what do you see? How can you change things around you so that there is less waste?

Here’s what I see:

I get up in the morning and go to brush my teeth – using a plastic toothbrush with paste out of a plastic tube.

I take a shower to wash my hair using shampoo and conditioner out of plastic bottles.

I brush my hair (or comb it) using a plastic brush & comb set.

Heck, even the shower curtain is plastic – as is the toilet seat, the outlet covers, and god knows what else.

Right there, I can eliminate plenty.

I am now using shampoo bars and toothy tabs from Lush, and am looking for a good wooden brush/comb set as well as toothbrushes made of bamboo. I hope to find a shower curtain that is durable yet NOT plastic. Sadly I can’t do a thing about the building materials in my bathroom, so will just have to make sure that my own house is built as “naturally” as possible.

And that was only one room/one event in my life! How much more can I change for the better? How about in the kitchen?

I bought pouches made of nylon in three different sizes to be used instead of zip-loc baggies. They’re washable in either the washing machine or in the dish washer (or in my case, by hand) and they will last a lot longer than their plastic counterparts. As an added bonus, they come in cute fanciful patterns to liven up your day!

There are – of course – the reusable bags that fold up into tiny packages that are used at the grocery store instead of the plastic bags they hand out by the gazillion.  That one is basically a no-brainer, and there’s no reason AT ALL why everyone on the planet would choose not to use them.

What are your recommendations?