Reduce plastic waste :: PlasticLess.com

The majority of cotton swabs these days are made using plastic for the stick. The packaging is also usually plastic. If you are looking for a greener alternative, I saw some organic cotton swabs with paper sticks and cardboard packaging at The Body Shop.

I did a bit of research on cotton swabs after noticing them washing up on the beach. I was not surprised to learn that the most common use for these things is to stick them in our ears. I was slightly surprised to read that medical professionals are telling us to stop that. If people listened to medical advice, this particular bit of plastic waste could be reduced by over 50%.

Don’t stick cotton swabs in your ears

Photo Credit : TheMuuj

As far as all the other uses for cotton swabs goes, consider alternatives like toilet paper, tissues, or cotton balls. I stopped buying cotton swabs for the family ages ago and my makeup wearing daughters have adjusted somehow.

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I recently received two beautiful cotton batik reusable shopping bags from Wrapsacks.com. These bags fold and zip into a compact size. I like the way that the outside of the storage pouch doubles as a reinforced bottom for the bag. I am happy to finally have a grocery bag with shoulder length straps. Upon closer examination, I noticed that the strap material goes all the way down the sides of the bag and into the reinforced bottom. This should make them a lot more durable than the cheap bags that I bought on the street in Bizerte. The cheap bags have mostly held up for more than a year, but there have been two handle failures. One failure was the result of very heavy groceries and the other bag got caught in a bus door with me still standing on the sidewalk.

Catherine loves the ‘Marrakesh’ design (shown above). When I added this brand of bags to my reusable bag roundup earlier this month, I mentioned the wide variety of designs. Most of the designs are what I would describe as pretty. They were smart to include a design that’s not pretty and, strangely enough, it’s my favorite. The ‘Pedal Power’ pattern has black block printed bicycles and bicycle chains over a background of earthy oranges and browns. It would be perfect for anybody who drives their bike to the farmer’s market.

Michael Miner, the co-creator of Wrapsacks, regularly visits the production facility in Indonesia where the bags are ethically produced. While he was there recently, he took some stunning photographs of the batik dyeing process. I love the fact that they are still using the power of the sun as a dye fixative.

It’s a nice coincidence that I received these free review samples right before leaving for Gozo, where the plastic shopping bag has just recently become the target of some regulation. They had tried a small bag tax years ago, but retailers were willing to absorb the cost rather than inconvenience customers who were set in their ways. Now they charge 0.18 Euros.

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It doesn’t slice. It doesn’t dice. I use a knife for that. It crushes stuff and it will do so for the rest of my life without using one watt of electricity. Hey, I already wrote a post about my mortar and pestle. It still makes me happy.

Two other tools that I use to process food are my bare hands. I have recently been on a biscuit making jag and I used them for the whole process. I recently learned to fill a bowl with hot soapy water beforehand so I don’t get the taps all gunky.

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When I lived in Canada, I had the basic power tools required by the unwritten laws that men live by. There were already big box stores in my neck of the woods when I moved out on my own, so I was able to pick up some pretty affordable tools. They had plastic bodies and plastic handles. Some of them came with plastic carrying cases.

The affordability of the power tools marketed to the average homeowner is reflected in their quality. I can remember having my Makita drill break when I was foolishly trying to put screws through a piece of Larch without drilling any pilot holes. I kept the non-functioning drill for a few years because the company provides free labor on repairs once a year at its factory outlet. I never got around to taking it. I don’t know if I would have been able to find Makita in the giant industrial park anyway.

I love the idea of tool libraries for a number of reasons. I like anything that reduces the consumption of cheap consumer items that will not last and that will head to a landfill. I like the idea of homeowners having access to good tools.

If you have a handyman on your Christmas shopping list, think twice before you buy them a tool that is not built to last a lifetime. Also, check to see if there is a tool library or even a tool rental shop in your area. I just realized that gift certificates from an equipment rental business would make a great gift for DIY people.

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Walmart is a phenomenal success story and it has a huge impact on the retail landscape wherever it spreads. The largest retail corporation in the world has a lot of detractors from various segments of society, some of which overlap. But they sell reusable shopping bags to their customers for 50 cents, so they’re not all bad, right?

If you are stridently anti-walmart and there is a store nearby, why not stop in and pick up one of these bags? When you get home you, or a crafty friend, can add some extra taglines to the logo. It’ll really make a statement at the next local farmer’s market

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A toy doesn’t have to be very complex to be good(Not to impugn the excellent design and craftsmanship pictured above). Basically it needs to have a shape and it needs to stay in one piece. Everything else is just detail. Toy commercials on television would have us believe that children have very little imagination and require a ready made set of characters and actions in order to have imaginative play. Every parent knows that that is bull, but most parents still buy the crap. Get some kid a handmade wooden toy this year and fight the power.

Photo credit: Bitninja

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I use a safety razor as a plastic-less alternative to disposable razors. When I first made the switch, a few people in America left comments about how they could not find razors packaged without plastic. Hopefully that has changed now that retro-shaving is cool. Here in Tunisia, I have at least three brands to choose from. Gillette blades can be found in cardboard packs of 10, hanging on cardboard display panels right at the checkout.

People who follow me on Twitter may recall that I was sold a single Gillette razor blade last week by a shopkeeper who was down to his last pack. I had a bad experience with cheap razor blades earlier this year, but I decided to give it another shot with these Shark brand blades.

This is going to be a very short review. These Egyptian made blades do a perfectly adequate job. I would buy them again.

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These plastic crates are used as part of a local returnable bottle supply chain. Consumers in this city also can choose to buy plastic bottles that came with thick plastic wrapped around every six bottles. These come by truck to a local supermarket on a pallet and the whole stack of six-packs are held steady using a lot of plastic wrap. It’s not hard to figure out which option is less wasteful. I had a discussion on twitter recently about the carbon footprint of returnable glass. It really comes down to distance traveled. If packaging and distribution is localized, the returnable glass option looks pretty good. Despite the logic, returnable glass distribution networks continue to disappear in the developed world.

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I’m usually an enthusiastic cheerleader about reusable shopping bags. Disposable plastic shopping bags are one of the most obvious targets for plastic reduction. I was given pause when I read a thoughtful article complaining about the fact that businesses are giving away tons of canvas bags as promotional items and that consumers have consumed more reusable bags than they should.

The author admitted to finding 23 reusable bags in his own home. They take 100s of times more energy to produce than the same number of ’single use’ plastic bags. Logic dictates that you have to use a bag hundreds of times before it’s supposed environmental benefit is realized. Do you have dozens of reusable bags in your closet?

Here is my advice for people who already have too many reusable shopping bags -

• Start saying thanks, but no thanks to free reusable shopping bags.
• Don’t feel too bad about your accumulated bags. Tell yourself that you were planning ahead for the next few decades.
• Come out of the closet with the bags that you have accumulated. If they are hanging on a hall tree or sitting in a basket by the door, you are more likely to use them.
• Pack food bank donations in a reusable grocery bag and donate the bag along with the food.
• If you have some particularly cute bags that are in like new condition, use them in place of gift wrap when you have occasion to. The popular tradition of regifting might help move surplus reusable shopping bags into the hands of people who actually need them.
• If you drive, pack several bags up as small as you can and put them in your glove compartment. These are your emergency stash for when you forget to bring your everyday bags.
• Consider using your cloth shopping bags to carry items during activities instead of buying purpose specific tote bags.

Here is my advice to people who don’t have too many reusable shopping bags. -

• Check to see if you have any single use plastic bags packed away. They are actually reusable to some degree. I save the ones that appear in my house for dirty jobs like potatoes. I will use the plastic bag to buy bulk potatoes a few times and them use it as a garbage bag.
• If you need to get a few more bags, try to find bags that are made from repurposed material. Buy locally made when possible. Free is also good, but know when to say when.
• Consider making your own bags from available materials.
• Reusable shopping bags are typically larger and stronger than plastic shopping bags. Don’t think that you need 10 cloth shopping bags because you used to buy 10 plastic bags full of groceries on your big grocery run. I walk, so I know that 4 cloth bags is plenty for my market trips. I can’t carry more than that. 6 bags should be adequate for drivers who shop for a family.

I have seen cloth shopping bags in piles of used clothing here in Tunisia. That is definitely a good indicator that they are in surplus in the developed world. I bought new cloth bags from a guy in front of the vegetable market. They are very cheap woven synthetic material. I presently have five of them. I think I have had a handle failure with one bag and I used it to contain a pile of outgrown clothing that I put out on the street for people to take. I don’t know how many times I will have to use these bags in order to realize an environmental benefit.

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I was happy to see this big bin installed on the public beach access this summer. A lot of water bottles that may have otherwise ended up in the sea are placed in it. At the same time it serves as a daily reminder to me that collecting and recycling plastics is a costly and inefficient process. My blog is supposed to focus on the first ‘R’, Reduction. I have reduced my own consumption of plastic water bottles as much as possible by drinking filtered tap water.

Here are a few quotes that I have found, both optimistic and pessimistic about recycling plastic…

Recycling is almost universally regarded as a virtue. I beg to differ. The act of recycling actually means that we have failed to reduce or reuse.
- Gary Hirshberg

Recycling a single plastic bottle can conserve enough energy to light a 60W bulb for up to 6 hours.
- South Lakeland Recycling

I am not sure how they got these numbers. The fact that a lot of plastic is transported for huge distances leads me to doubt the figure.

The majority of the plastics we recycle, regardless of type, end up in China, where worker safety standards are virtually nonexistent and materials are processed under dirty, primitive conditions…
- Mindfully.org

Recycling one ton of plastic saves 7.4 cubic yards of landfill space.
- Earth911

These quotes are starting to look like ‘tweets’. Maybe I will recycle them

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