Reduce plastic waste :: PlasticLess.com

My life is kind of boring right now. It’s been a while since a perfect PlasticLess post has presented itself in the form of a problem or a solution. I have resorted to looking at the most relevant item on Google Shopping when I use the search term ‘plastic’

I hadn’t thought about plastic clipboards before. I bought a lot of plastic school supplies back in the day. All of my employers supplied me with clipboards made from metal or pressboard. I used clipboards daily in a couple of my longest running day jobs.

After seeing the number crunching for plastic versus aluminum beverage containers on Ask Pablo, I am hesitant to push aluminum as the best alternative in any instance. I have some experience with clipboards and the clip is usually the weakest link. The durability argument may not fly in this case. Plastic clipboards made of 100% recycled plastic are touted as being a green choice. I can think of a few greener choices.

With more and more tasks going paperless in every occupation, used clipboards should be readily available and reasonably priced.

A clipboard is not a very complicated device, it is what it says it is a board with a clip on it. If you can find a suitable board or board-like item lying around, just buy a big-ass clip at Staples and voila.

I am pretty sure that I don’t need a clipboard, so my personal alternative to a plastic clipboard is nothing. Most places where I write stuff tend to have flat horizontal surfaces in one form or another.

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I had a Twitter conversation with a pro-bottled water person today. She goes by Bottled Water Babe and her profile page includes a link to the site for a coalition formed in 2007 by the International Bottled Water Association.

One of the main points that she makes in her tweets is that many people who are shamed out of drinking bottled water are turning to soft drinks as an alternative. This assertion was pause for thought to say the least. I personally choose to avoid soft drinks except for rare occasions and I actively discourage my kids from drinking them. They still use some of their discretionary funds on the stuff. In a society like America, with its skew towards obesity, pushing people toward the HFCS is not a move in the right direction.

What remains to be seen is whether this argument is based on solid research. A reduction in the consumption of bottled water combined with an increase in soda sales is not evidence. A survey that asks questions about the reasons for beverage choices could be suggestively worded. You ask people if they are doing something out of concern for the environment and they are pretty likely to say yes.

Soft drinks are marketed so aggressively that it’s pretty hard to point at something like environmental concern about bottled water as influencing consumption.

Photo Credit: FoundPhotosLJ

The frustrating thing about the industry backlashes against environmental activism is that they often have a fundamental dishonesty that prevents dialog with those who hold an opposing view. It seems to me that they often word their press releases like they are helping to inform that general public while the real objective is to influence legislators. In a democracy, those legislators are interested in public opinion and the intellectually lazy ones can have their perceptions skewed by corporate lobbyists.

UPDATE: The source that Bottled Water Babe used to support her claim that people are switching from bottled water to bottled soft drinks is a Telegraph item that relies heavily on information and interpretation supplied by the National Hydration Council. This council was founded by the UKs three biggest water bottlers. As I suspected, they take dry numbers about sales trends for beverages and use them to support their viewpoint.

The Telegraph recently published a bizarrely upbeat report on an American woman killing an elephant in Zimbabwe. It was a perfect example of lazy journalism. The tone of the reporting mirrored the bravado and self promotion of the woman’s blog and talk about her on hunting forums.

This particular vanguard of old media seems to be like one of those poor albatross mothers who picks up any brightly colored garbage that is floating around and then regurgitates it for her chicks to swallow.

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I saved a kitten from almost certain death yesterday. Catherine and I were sitting at our local cafe in the early morning and a tiny black and white kitten approached us on unsteady legs. It seemed to be imploring us.

We have a vet clinic next door. I went over with the kitten and my youngest daughter. The vet asked if we were going to keep it at our house or if we wanted her to find a place for it. Catherine surmised that this may have been a euphemistic discussion and that the other place was more like a better place. Anyway, the kitten was running a temperature and it had diarrhea (on the vet table, ew). The vet gave it a shot and prescribed some oral antibiotic. Here’s where the inevitable plastic comes in. I had to get a syringe to administer the medicine and on top of that there was a plastic 5ml spoon in the box with the medicine.

I don’t have any advice to dispense related to this anecdote. I do have a kitty photo. I have heard that websites with pictures of cats are very popular on the internet.

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I said that I would do this if anybody double dog dared me. That was meant to be a lighthearted movie allusion to add some color to this otherwise quite boring green blog. Somebody dared me, in the comments, about ten minutes after I published.

I like the fact that the Overfly Brand Safety Razor comes in a cardboard box. I also like the fact that it is displayed by the dozen in a larger cardboard box. I don’t like the plastic on the handle. I considered reneging and using the plastic handle as an excuse. Then I remembered that the razor that I already own came in a plastic case. Chadd at retrorazor mentioned that his earlier importing efforts included razors in plastic cases. They have them in cloth bags now.

If the cheap Overfly Razor proved to offer an adequate shave, it would actually be a better choice than my original razor.

Here are links to photos of my test shave…

Sorry for going all old media on you with all the multiple page views. I figure I deserve some extra traffic since, as you see in the last photo, I bled quite a bit. It may have been the worst shave I have ever had. If you are tougher and/or more skillful than me it might be adequate. I have carefully dried this razor off and put it away. If I ever lose my good razor it can bridge the gap while I look for another good razor.

Update: Apparently the way I built the links late last night you could only see the pictures if you were logged in to the Plasticless admin, oops. It’s fixed now.

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I owe somebody an apology. Back a few months ago I wrote a post about Virtual Bubble Wrap. That post is ranking at the top of Google for the term Alternatives to Plastic Bubble Wrap and obviously the cute little flash game is not a substitute for bubble wrap as far as its intended purpose is concerned.

Crumpled up newspapers are an adequate substitute in many cases. I have also been saving up egg pallets. These are the dividers used for bulk egg delivery. I live near a shop so I just buy 30 eggs at a time and carry them home with the tray. I thought at first that they were returnable, but it turned out that he throws them away. I have four now, enough to protect a few fragile items if I had occasion to move or to ship something.

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I ventured into the back alleys of the souk in Bizerte today. I bought a very cheap all metal jack knife of unknown origin for 1.000TND (that’s about 73 cents) so I could ask to take pictures of some products without feeling like I was imposing. The above picture shows a cardboard box that holds a dozen other cardboard boxes that each contain a safety razor and a small mirror.

I approve of the packaging, but I wasn’t very impressed with the product. First off, they have a plastic handle. Secondly, there is no handle twisting mechanism to open the blade housing. It just kind of snaps together. For me, part of the safety in my razor is being able to open it with my hands far away from the blade. If anybody double dog dares me, I will pick one up and do a proper product review.

I was charmed into buying off-brand razor blades last year. I recently finished using them and felt kinda stupid the first time I used my newly purchased Gillette Silver Blue blades. They were much more effective and much less murderous.

I was also charmed into getting a very cheap shaving brush last year. The pig bristles came unglued from the handle after just a few uses. I have been using my bare hands to lather up my face for some time now and it seems to be sufficient. I just read that actual badger hair is used to make some shaving brushes in China. My source indicates that paying less than $10 for a brush virtually guarantees that you won’t get badger. I worry about the level of animal cruelty in hunting and trapping badgers. I worry about the welfare of pigs as well, but since they are being farmed for meat anyway, using their bristles doesn’t seem abhorrent to me. Does anyone want to start a cruelty free shaving brush business? Certain breeds of horse have hairs that work for this purpose.

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Virtual alternatives are greener than the real deal in most cases. I am satisfied the the calculator that came with my computer operating system. I don’t need to go out and buy another handful of plastic and heavy metal to help me balance my checkbook (like I’m the one who actually does that, lol).

I don’t need to buy bubble wrap or a Rubik’s Cube to occupy my idle hands either. There are free virtual versions of those plastic things.

I’m the one who made the stickers all green. You can get a regular one at RyanHeise.com.

Note: The Rubik’s Cube is embeddable on your own blog or website, but it seems to have some buggy javascript, or else my server/Wordpress install just can’t work with it.

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I did more picking up and less photography than usual today. I even picked up the broken tricycle that I had seen on a previous trip. Because it was such a windy day, I didn’t think that I would find any wild bags. I brought two plastic bags that had come home with some takeout. I filled the bags with drink bottles, lighters, a football glove, an insole, several bottle tops, an empty sunscreen bottle, a broken personal flotation device, an ATV chain guard (I think) and various large fragments of unidentified plastic.

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I have been blogging about alternatives to plastic for almost two years and I have hardly ever mentioned hemp. It’s not because I haven’t looked into it as an alternative material. It’s partly because the body of information online is sullied with the unfocused ramblings of stoned slackers. It’s mostly because I sometimes publish unfocused ramblings and I don’t want my mom or anyone else to incorrectly assume that I am a stoned slacker.

Hemp was actually displaced by other natural fibers before plastics like nylon and polyester were invented. During the Industrial Revolution materials like wood pulp, cotton, jute and manila were found to be more suitable for large scale mechanized production of paper, textiles, rope and other products. Technological advances also meant that rope ceased to be as vital to commerce as it once was. When the US government used a tax law to prohibit hemp and marijuana in the 1930s, there was no strong lobby to oppose the move.

Hemp does have some unique attributes. It is fast growing and dense. This means that herbicides are not required for hemp production. The length and strength of its bast fibers are actually a significant stumbling block because they make it difficult or impossible to retrofit existing processing facilities. Canada has fostered a fledgling hemp industry since the 90s and the biggest problem has been the risk of oversupplying the market for the fiber. Basically, production is infinitely scalable while processing and market demand are not.

Hemp should be part of the solution to the plastic problem, but my opinion is that it won’t be anytime soon because of logistics and more obviously because it is illegal to grow it in the USA.

There are some good hemp products on the retail market including reusable shopping bags. The information on this organic hemp products website suggests that many hemp products are made in China where they are processed using toxic chemicals and manufactured using unfair labor practices.

Update: I went back to this topic this afternoon and found a few websites belonging to large technologically advanced hemp processors. They make some pretty interesting products including auto components. With all the recent concerns about plastic auto parts off-gassing into the interior of new cars, hemp might find a niche in this industry.

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Beth Terry over at FakePlasticFish has just put up a blog post asking everyone to tally and photograph a week’s worth of personal plastic consumption.

This sounds like a great project and I hope she gets a broad spectrum of participants. I plan to tally my week starting sometime in the next few days. I almost wish that I had a precision scale for projects like this.

Please check out the details over at FakePlasticFish.com

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