Reduce plastic waste :: PlasticLess.com

Despite my good intentions and my preaching to the children about the evils of plastic, we have accumulated a handful of DVD cases over the past couple of years. I am dwelling on them now because I am busy packing and I need to jettison anything we can do without. I struck upon the idea of giving our empty cases to a local rental place with the idea that he can use them rather than buying new ones. This strategy wouldn’t work in the Blockbuster part of the world. Here on the frontier, it’s more of a DVD-R rental business model…

The DVD-R store was closed when I walked down the street. The weather’s nice so I just put my little stack of empty cases plus 4 DVDs that had no English audio on the doorstep with a little note that said ‘Gratuit’ The cases are the exact type that he uses for his display , so I think they will get used rather than thrown in the garbage.

Reuse is always better than recycling. Reducing is even better. I don’t watch very many movies and I hardly ever buy them in the form of DVDs. Renting movies should be an action that uses less plastic than buying. Unfortunately, many people have helped make places like Blockbuster spread because we all want to be able to watch a movie the moment that it is released. You do the math. Big video rental stores buy huge quantities of plastic DVDs and packaging so they can guarantee that it is available whenever you want it. The aftermath of this is that those physical products are greatly devalued after a few weeks. How many people are going to get duplicate DVDs from cheap friends for Christmas this year?

Wouldn’t it make more sense for the providers of entertainment media to have a master copy and reproduction rights in each location? What about switching to some kind of digital file that cannot be copied? Every loyal customer could have a purpose specific flash drive that they bring to the rental store. When you pay to rent a new movie, they remove the ones that you have rented previously. I would love to get some feedback about this idea. Maybe it’s already happening. Maybe there is some fatal flaw in my logic. Let me know.

The Columbus Washboard Company has an awesome website. It makes me happy. There is only one aspect of their business that makes me sad. They are the ONLY washboard manufacturing company left in the USA.

Clothes washing is a chore that is automated for the vast majority of people living in America and other developed countries. For many people, going green in the laundry room means buying big appliances that use less water and electricity than their old ones. They might also choose soaps or detergents that pollute less and come in sustainable packaging. Washing all your clothing by hand sounds like absolute madness.

When we moved to a developing country, we were a bit surprised to find that our options for furnished accommodation did not include washing machines. We were very surprised to find that it is in fact humanly possible to do all your laundry by hand. When we decided that we staying long term, we bought a twin tub washer spinner. It is, unfortunately, a very big hunk of plastic (I never claimed to be perfect). I am able to effectively reuse gray water from the laundry for toilet flushing and watering the garden (non-food).

I had my eyes peeled for a washboard during the weeks that we were hand washing. There was still a washboard in use when I was growing up. It was mostly for socks. My mom insisted on us washing our own stinky sports socks. Washboards are popular with the Amish and with soldiers. If you are planning to make some changes in your laundry procedure for the sake of the environment, give the old scrub board some consideration. Automatic washing machines don’t do anything magical, they just move your clothes around in some soapy water, remove the soapy water, rinse and repeat. Washboards are obviously labor intensive, but you could consider the chore to be part of your fitness regime. There’s probably a piece of equipment at the gym that simulates the main action required to wash socks on a washboard. I don’t know if it targets your abs.

Washboards work well with bar soap. Some people are moving to laundry soap in bar form to avoid excess packaging.

A lot of other household tools and gadgets disappeared for good when the avocado colored appliances landed on our planet back in the 70s. The washboard managed to hang on partly because it was in demand for alternate uses like musical percussion and decoration. It is also really useful.

Photo credit: Robert Couse-Baker

Update: The question of drying clothes came up in the comment section and I mentioned wringers. I realized later that many people aren’t backwoodsy and ancient like me so they might wonder what I am talking about. Here is a photo, I am pretty sure they aren’t due for a comeback.

I have never actually watched this movie. At this point it is quite possible that I never will. Nonetheless I am glad that it was made.

I think I have read a fairly broad swath of the source materials for this movie. I have watched the more recent animation describing the tipping point concept. I believe that human activity does impact the climate.

Here is an interesting paragraph from Roger Ebert:

Gore says that although there is “100 percent agreement” among scientists, a database search of newspaper and magazine articles shows that 57 percent question the fact of global warming, while 43 percent support it. These figures are the result, he says, of a disinformation campaign started in the 1990s by the energy industries to “reposition global warming as a debate.” It is the same strategy used for years by the defenders of tobacco. My father was a Luckys smoker who died of lung cancer in 1960, and 20 years later it was still “debatable” that there was a link between smoking and lung cancer. Now we are talking about the death of the future, starting in the lives of those now living.

The importance of other issues has occasionally made me question the importance of having a blog about reducing plastic waste. I have read comments from people suggesting that tiny green choices like buying a canvas shopping bag relieve average consumers (or more importantly producers of waste in all its forms) of their guilt and allow them to continue living in a grossly unsustainable fashion thinking that they are doing their bit to ‘save the planet’.

I stopped at the curb to let a car pass before crossing the street today. This car had one of those fancy advertising graphic finishes (these are plastic BTW). It was advertising the local brand of bottled water and the French words on the doors said that you should drink at least 1.5 liters per day. They sell water in 1.5 liter containers. There are 90,000 people living in this town. I tried to picture 90,000 water bottles. The 5 bottles that I am NOT buying every day don’t really make much of a difference. I guess writing about them can only increase their impact.

I have to confess that I have never thrown a party for dozens of people. I am an introvert. If I were to wake up as an entirely different person and decide to have a big bash for all of the acquaintances that I would call my friends, I would try to figure out an alternative to the disposable plastic beer glass.

Disposable plastic beer glasses are recommended by many authorities on serving alcohol at large parties…

…You need to invest in some plastic beer cups. The investment is relatively cheap. You can get a large stack of plastic beer cups for about the same price you are going to pay for a bottle of dish detergent to clean all those glasses.

The savings in time is astronomically higher. Instead of washing and drying all those glasses, just pull out a black plastic bag, sweep them all into it, and you’re done.

I think the most obvious alternative to plastic beer glasses is to have your guests drink straight from returnable glass bottles. The only drawback that I can see with this is the safety issue. I attended an Agricultural College in Canada. I saw a lot of beer drinking at pubs and events. Most of these events did not involve disposable cups and I can only remember a handful of bottle related injuries. One or two of them were very memorable.

A slightly more inventive alternative would be to ask your guests to bring their own drinking vessel. Those wacky medieval recreationists do that all the time.

Serving beer from plastic laundry detergent jugs is a step in the wrong direction. Don’t do it.

If your party is commemorating something important, you could shell out for keepsake glassware. If you bring home a beer glass or champagne flute from someone’s special day, don’t have it sitting on your windowsill filled with plant cuttings that you are trying to root when they visit you after the divorce. I’m just sayin’.

I presently live in a country that does not have any McDonald’s outlets. I had to check online to find out the current theme for the 1/4 pound of plastic that kids get with their cholestafest.

Happy Meal Toys are bad. I’m not going to mince words the way they mince cow body parts. Giving kids a toy with their meal seems like a recipe for an eating disorder. Paying people in Asia a pittance to design and produce a toy that has some fleeting pop culture significance but that will last for a thousand years is absurd. Sometimes they don’t even do a very good job.

The worst thing about happy meal toys is that they teach small children that acquiring plastic crap is a good thing. It’s not a good thing and the young children that are getting these toys today are eventually going to have to deal with plastic waste along with a host of other negative environmental impacts of human activity. The dad who wrote the blog post in the above link said that his kid played with her toy for 30 seconds before she got tired of it. 30 seconds of entertainment? A single use plastic shopping bag could entertain a kid that long (BUT THEY ARE NOT TOYS)

I seem to remember these toys being optional and I certainly hope that McDonald’s employees ask before putting them in the box. Just say no to plastic toys at fast food restaurants.

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.

I grew up with Tonka toys. They were mostly hand-me-downs from older cousins. Back when I was a kid they were steel with some plastic parts. They were durable. I wouldn’t call them indestructible. My dad drove a real dump truck and we occasionally left our toys on the lane.

Tonka started out as a company that made steel rails. They got the toy idea from a neighboring business that failed. Tonka was a huge success. I am writing about Tonka on a blog that is all about reducing plastic waste because Tonka toys are increasingly being made out of plastic. The company was bought by Hasbro (the people who make Mister PlasticHead) in 1991. Hasbro has discontinued many of the metal toys. I can’t be bothered to do the research, but I assume there was a concurrent shift away from domestic manufacturing. My observations lead me to believe that plastic Tonka toys are less durable than metal. Hasbro has a ‘Classic’ line of Tonka toys with steel parts, but many of the toys that I grew up with are discontinued.

Playing with toy trucks in the dirt seems to be something that kids thrive on. I think buying used toys that have proven durability is a wise decision. Some kids are just as happy to play with kid sized garden tools.

If you and your kids don’t have access to an outdoor imagination excavation, wooden trucks make great indoor toys.

Vintage Tonka photo credit: Steve-Photos, Others: fair use from Toys(backwards R)Us and Hasbro.

1975 to 1982 was the golden age of movie merchandise according to the NYT. The articles that I found on the subject mostly talk in dollars. I have to wonder what the numbers mean in terms of tons of plastic.

In more recent decades, toy manufacturers have experienced a lot of expensive failures with movie merchandise. It is a high risk venture. I think one of the ways that they mitigate the risk is by making really cheap plastic products. On one of my walks on the beach, I found a broken Spiderman bucket and filled it with other plastic trash.

There are three main strategies used in movie merchandising and the target demographic of the movie will determine which one gets the most attention. The main difference between plastic toys and plastic collectibles is the price. Blockbusters that are aimed at the cool kids are better off selling clothes.

I would love to see some big name movie producers make a responsible decision and simply not grant licenses related to making crappy plastic movie merchandise. Worldwide illegal sales of unlicensed merchandise would continue, but consumers might buy less.

The Trekkies are typically enthusiastic consumers of plastic crap. It’s too late to argue against merchandising with regard to the current release but it’s not too late to suggest to fans of Star Trek that they enjoy the experience of the movie without buying any plastic collectibles. Resistance is not futile.

Photo Credit: Nanoprobe67

First off, a hearty congratulations are in order for To-Go Ware. Their cause and their products got the most important endorsement in the Universe. Oprah likes their stuff.

The Earth Day edition of the Oprah Winfrey Show put a spotlight on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and gave some valuable advice to her viewers on how to reduce plastic waste.

I hope that Oprah will remember the issue of plastic waste for more than just one episode. Hopefully future installments of her Favorite things won’t include stuff like melamine bowls.

Photo Credit: Hugo90

Planes, trains, automobiles and more can become an obsession for nominally sane adults who don’t mind the smell of glue. A lot of plastic and other materials are expended on miniature versions of the equipment that we use to get from point A to point B.

The concept of having a hobby was confined to the upper class up until the last few hundred years. I think people who have a surplus of time and a crafty mentality would do better to find an activity that is sustainable and might even benefit the earth. Gardening is the first thing that comes to mind. There’s no airplane glue involved, but manure can be almost as overpowering.