Fake Plastic Fish was an awesome name for a blog. Beth Terry is one of the people who really walk the talk when it comes to plastic reduction and she has been blogging about it for years now. She recently made the difficult decision to change the name of her blog. As catchy as it was, it didn’t instantly convey to the uninitiated what it was all about. I have finally gotten around to updating my blogroll to reflect the change and I though it was also worth a post.
Beth Terry’s blog about her plastic free life is now called My Plastic-free Life. Here’s a great post about Plastic Easter Eggs. Below is a video of Beth at TED
Here’s a tip for all you trick or treaters – Pillow cases have way more capacity than these dorky plastic jack’o'lanterns.
I have spent several years living in countries where Halloween isn’t widely celebrated. I don’t want to be seen as a killjoy, but this is seriously one tradition that could be abandoned with no real loss to society. The dark forces behind rampant consumerism are what keep it alive.
I have delved into this topic before, but since everyone should get e new toothbrush every 3 months or and/or after any bout of cold or flu symptoms, I think it’s time for a fresh look at the topic.
I have to confess that my family’s replacement habits lie somewhere between the dentists recommendation and the average behavior. A poll of Americans revealed that people replace their toothbrush on average 1.9 times per year.
I am not going to order a bone and bristle toothbrush from the UK. They are expensive and they probably require more energy to produce than a typical modern toothbrush. The company that makes these non-plastic brushes imports badger hair from China where the badger may be killed using inhumane methods and at unsustainable rates.
One way to reduce the amount of plastic waste resulting from your toothbrush purchase is to buy family packs, even if you aren’t a family. The conventional packaging for toothbrushes typically involves plastic. Bulk packages typically use less packaging per unit. The only option available to me at the supermarket was a two pack. It had roughly the same amount of packaging as for a single toothbrush.
An even better way to reduce waste is to buy at toothbrush that is designed with replaceable bristles. I bought a Trisa brand brush last year and the overall reduction in plastic waste was listed at 72% just from buying the handle and 2 sets of bristles. The disappointing thing was that there was no local retailer selling replacement heads. If I ever find a store display with toothbrushes and replacement heads, I will stock up. I am going to have my teeth for a long time.
I am a little bit disappointed that the two brands that I have looked into both package replacement toothbrush heads in plastic. One brand, Trisa, sells TWO new heads in a toothbrush sized plastic hanging package. I have to wonder why they don’t sell them in packs of three or four if their logistics demand that the package have those dimensions. Fuchs has a similar product and they put four replacements in a package. Fuchs is an American company and their products are distributed through United Natural Foods (UNFI), Mountain Peoples Distributors, Rainbow Distributing, Lotus Light Natural Body Care and Tree of Life.
If you have confidence in your local recycling programs, you might prefer to buy a recycled and recyclable toothbrush. Check out PreserveProducts.com. They also do a better job on minimizing packaging than most other toothbrush manufacturers
When my son had a problem with his laptop overheating, I looked to the computer shop for a solution. There are lots of laptop coolers on the market these days and most of them do the job that they were designed for reasonably well. But they are mostly plastic and I have no doubt that they don’t function for more than a few years before they become junk. I actually disassembled my son’s unit after it started failing. The low power fan motors are no match for a few stray human hairs. I was able to fix it, but those tiny motors will probably give up sooner or later.
I have spent the last year or so with a netbook as my primary workstation. This tiny laptop generates a fair amount of heat. One day I borrowed my son’s laptop cooler to see if my netbook would function better if it was kept cooler. It was a very unscientific trial but I think the machine really does work better if heat can be moved out of it’s body faster. I haven’t bought a plastic laptop cooler. I realized that they main reason that a netbook heats up is because it sits almost flush with the surface that it sits on. My solution couldn’t be more simple. I grabbed a scrap of ceramic tile from a local construction site. It is about 1/2 inch thick by 12 inch long by 2 inches wide. I put the back feet of my netbook up on this to provide more space for the heat to dissipate. It seems to help.
I think with any household problem it’s a good idea to look for waste free DIY solutions before resorting to the stroe-bought solutions that are being marketed.
I don’t want to make any kind of broad assumption. There may have been a few reusable steel water bottles at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28.
I have a dream of a land where single serving plastic water bottles are socially unacceptable and events such as this provide free potable water straight from a tanker truck.
A sad fact that defenders of the plastic bag will often use as a comeback is this: The majority of plastic waste in the oceans of the world comes from commercial fishing. I’m not sure what the actual percentages are and I’m guessing that nobody else is either. I did see way too many tangled up nets on the shore in Tunisia.
I spent a lot of my youth trout fishing in the wilderness of Nova Scotia. I remember seeing some plastic waste from recreational fishing as well. Tangles of fishing line, and snagged lures weren’t a surprise. I was pretty judgmental towards the people who tossed the packaging for their fishing gear in and around the lakes and streams and even more so towards the ones who left a pile of garbage from an overnight stay.
Sport-fishing involves some self imposed handicaps and some that are put in place by governments. If you are a fisherman, try to do it without adding to the already disturbing amount of plastic waste in our environment.
“In most preschools, you find mainly girls playing with dolls in the houskeeping and dress-up corner, while boys build with blocks and play with trucks. Teachers and parents unconsciously promote these stereotypes.” – Dolls, Trucks, and Identity: Educators help young children grow beyond gender [http://www.4children.org/issues/1997/november_december/dolls_trucks_and_identity/]
I would love to see a study of kids that did not have a ready access to representative dolls in childhood. Does such a group even exist?
Here we see a typical example of washed up plastic. Something about the density and shape of plastic bottle tops seems to make them one of the most common objects in beach litter. Recycling these tops is less economical than recycling PET plastic bottles. Many municipal recycling schemes do not even accept them. I can’t think of very many ways to reuse them effectively. The best option for consumers is to reduce the number of plastic bottle tops that they ‘consume.’ I try to cut my consumption of bottled soft drinks down to almost nothing. When local lemons are in season, I make lots of lemonade with sugar that comes packaged in paper, lemons that come packaged in lemon peels and water that comes from the tap. Actually, just about any kind of whole fruit can offer the sugar boost that people are craving when they buy a bottled beverage. We generations of effective advertising to thank for the high consumption of bottled soft drinks that seems normal to so many people around the world.
Nylon rope has almost completely replaced natural fiber rope because of its durability. Take a long walk on the beach and you will probably find some pieces of nylon rope.
Rope made from natural fiber like hemp and cotton are better for some purposes and just as good for many others. For any purpose that puts lives on the line, use whatever is recommended by experts. For less important uses, try natural rope first. I even make my own rope from rags. It is pretty easy and it works great. I wouldn’t go mountain climbing or yachting with the stuff, but I’m not doing either of those things anyway.
