Is there anything more pathetic than a used plastic bag?
They rip and tear. They float away in the slightest breeze. Left in the wild, their mangled remains entangle birds and choke sea turtles that mistake them for edible jellyfish. It takes 1,000 years for the bags to disintegrate, shedding hormone-disrupting chemicals as they do. And that outcome is all but inevitable, because no system exists to routinely recycle them. It’s no wonder some states have banned them and stores give discounts to customers with reusable bags.
But the plastics industry is working to make the public feel OK about using them again.
Companies whose futures depend on plastic production, including oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on bags and other plastic items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators.
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The crazy thing is the reduce is so easy. Im just old enough to remember soda being in aluminum cans and glass bottles and nothing else. It worked fine. There are some things were plastic has a significant benefit like medical but man. We don’t need to use plastic for pop. Getting meat from the butcher with butcher paper was pretty good to.
Vacuum sealing meat kind of requires plastic though. And that’s by far the best way to keep the meat good / fresh especially for freezing.
They said reduce though, not eliminate. I don’t know that we will eliminate petroleum-based plastic until we find a viable, economical alternative, but we can sure use less of it. There’s really no reason for all the plastic soda bottles apart from companies saving money.
I mean it might be good if we went back to an idea of buying what you need for the day or week and not so much for the month or year. At least in general. I mean its not like folks did not eat meat before plastic and without slaughtering it in their apartment.
I have been using solid bodysoap and shampoo now for some years and it has likley saved a solid amount of plastic waste and is super easy.
Girl here, I’ve never tried a bar soap that didn’t absolutely ruin my skin. open to suggestions but not feeling all that optimistic.
after reduce is reuse. Try to buy refills. Its still plastic but if you buy larger contaniers the surface area over volume is smaller so less plastic then hope the next step recycle for your community is actually doing it or better if you can find another use for the empty larger containers but that does get difficult over time.
Goat soap is wonderful 🐐 my skin is soft.
I have to admit thag I just never had problems, so I just use what ever I can get. I use vegan soaps, if that helps, but I can’t compare them to non vegan ones.
I don’t know where you are located, but here we have dedicated body and shampoo soap bars. They are quite a bit nicer to akin than using normal soap. That’s all the advice I have to offer unfortunately :)
Have you tried Cerave’s bar soap?
Do you remember when Quaker Oatmeal containers were all paper/cardboard? You could pull a paper tab, and it made a little paper lid for the cylinder.
About 10-15 years ago, they replaced that with a plastic pull tab that is glued on to the paper tube.
The paper has to be cheaper than the 2-part plastic, right?
Yeah im not sure if its cheaper. plastic is crazy cheap and paper by and large comes from trees which is its own problem. still I would prefer paper/cardboard. and yeah I remember how it used to be and it did work fine