Year 2, Week 10 Results: 19.6 oz of plastic waste!

What does it mean when your cat's poop suddenly turns red? Could be some terrible disease. Or could just mean your cat's been eating her red blanket and explains why she's not hungry anymore. I've been so worried about poor little albatross chicks consuming pieces of plastic out in the North Pacific Gyre, while here at home under my own nose my kitty's been chowing down on polar fleece. Look at all the holes!

This is the blanket the kittens came with. I put it in Arya's cage while she was healing, thinking it would be familiar and comforting. And I guess it was. Comfort food. (Plastic blanket, and god knows what kind of dye it's got in it.)

Little Hobble had her sutures out on Friday and is getting back to her normal spirited self, which is a little worrisome because her bones will take a while to completely heal. So we still have to keep her in the cage -- sans fake plastic blanket!

So, here's this week's tally. Plastic items used this week but purchased before the plastic project began:

• 1 85 oz bottle Sun Light gel dishwasher detergent and cap. The main reason this stuff has lasted so long is that we bought it when we first moved into this apartment three years ago and then rarely used the dishwasher. Only recently did I figure out that washing one load of dishes per week in the dishwasher is actually more efficient for us than handwashing. So, we've finally used up this bottle and have now switched to powdered detergent in a cardboard box.
  
  At the moment, we are trying Ecover Automatic Dishwasher Powder because it's non-toxic and also because it seems to have the most environmentally-friendly packaging. The box is made from recycled cardboard AND the spout is also cardboard rather than metal, like those of Seventh Generation and Whole Foods brands. Fewer types of materials means better recycling, right? The Ecover web site mentions a polypropylene cover, but I'm wondering if that is referring to some other product because our box of detergent has no plastic cover.
  
  Ecover has a statement about trace amounts of dioxane found in its products, but it seems to only apply to the liquid dish soap, not the powder. It remains to be seen how effective this stuff is. Do you guys use dishwasher detergent and if so, what works best for you? Oh, and does anyone have tips for the best way to load the dishwasher? Neither Michael nor I grew up with one, so we're doing the best we can.
  
  And yes, I'm sure we could be super efficient at handwashing and skip the machine. But the fact remains that we are not. Let's just leave it at that. :-)

And the new plastic waste:

• 1 chewed up red polar fleece blanket. Already fully described above.


• 1 plastic seal from around the neck of a jar of Fudge Is My Life fudge sauce. It's almost gone. I heard back from one person who won a jar a few weeks ago and mailed it off on Friday. Haven't heard back from the other two: Small Change and Bobbi. If you want your fudge, email me at beth [at] fakeplasticfish [dot] come before it's gone!

Only 4 items this week. Not bad!

Tomorrow, I'll report all about the ridiculous search for plastic-free water at the the Outside Lands Music Festival on Friday, and the Radiohead show that pummeled me with its exquisite noise and left me breathless with hope for humanity. (What a world where guys can make sounds that take over my whole body and soul and cause me to weep with amazement no matter how many times I hear them.)
 

 

Blue Sky Cleaners: Non-toxic and Plastic-free?

Nowadays, I stick to buying clothes that can be washed at home rather than dry cleaned. Dry cleaning is expensive and environmentally harmful. But I do still have several items of clothing, as well as some wool blankets, that cannot be machine laundered at home, and for those I need a good outside cleaner.

In the past, I have taken clothes to the dry cleaner down the street, not thinking about much more than the fact that I didn't want any plastic bag covering my clothes. The cleaner would comply with my request, and I'd do an extra bit by returning my used hangers to them. This takes care of the waste problem, but not the more serious problem of the toxic chemicals used in the cleaning process itself.

Thanks to Big Green Purse, I've learned a lot about dry cleaning recently. Which is great because I was almost taken in by the "green cleaner" down the street. Rockridge Royal Cleaners on College Ave has posters in its windows touting the DF-2000 "green" alternative to perchloroethylene ("perc").

Granted perc is nasty stuff which, according to Big Green Purse, has been linked to reproductive problems, disorders of the central nervous system, and has been listed by the EPA as a probably human carcinogen. In fact, the state of California is phasing it out.

But DF-2000 is not the answer. Manufactured by ExxonMobil, it is a petroleum product that "may present a fire hazard and emit volatile organic chemicals that contribute to smog." And another supposedly green method, GreenEarth (siloxane D5) may not be the answer either. The EPA is assessing a possible link to cancer.

The only two processes considered environmentally preferable by the EPA are 1) Wet cleaning, which uses water and biodegradable detergents, and 2) Liquid CO2 cleaning. The problem is that businesses using these methods are currently hard to find. In my neighborhood, there are none at all. But checking out the East Bay Eco Metro Guide, I did find a company, Blue Sky Cleaners, which uses both non-toxic methods and which picks up and drops off clothing at your doorstep. Certainly, walking my clothes down the street would be environmentally preferable than having a van pick up and drop them off. But until more companies switch to less toxic methods, this is what we'll have to do.

So, we've got the toxic chemicals out of the way, but what about the plastic? Blue Sky leaves its customers a reusable bag for their dirty clothes. But the clean clothes are delivered in plastic bags. When signing up for the service, I did request no plastic, but I guess the message wasn't relayed.

So I called Blue Sky and discussed the issue. I wondered why they couldn't skip the hangers and simply fold my clothes and return them to me in the blue bag. But they didn't want to do that since the blue bags have contained soiled clothing. I've suggest they have "clean" reusable bags as well as "dirty" reusable bags. In the meantime, they have promised to deliver my clothes folded in paper bags that I can return to the company for reuse, with no plastic.

I plan to hold onto these particular plastic bags and send them back to the company the next time, which will actually be a very long time from now, we so rarely dry clean.

Have you found non-toxic dry cleaning in your area? Or have you given up all clothes requiring dry cleaning in the first place? I can't bring myself to get rid of perfectly good clothes that I love and that I already own just because of the cleaning method. What do you think?
 

 

Dear Citra Solv...

June 13, 2008

Citra Solv, LLC
PO Box 2597
Danbury, CT 06813-2597

Dear Steve & Melissa,

I purchased a box of CitraSuds natural laundry detergent today at the Ecology Center in Berkeley, CA. I am always on the lookout for environmentally safe products and was happy to learn that your laundry powder is biodegradable and contains no chlorine bleach or synthetic perfumes or dyes. I was also happy to read on the box that the package is made from 100% recycled paper.

However, after opening the box, I was disappointed to find a plastic measuring scoop. While I realize the scoop may be made out of recycled plastic, the fact is that it is not biodegradable and cannot be further recycled – not where I live anyway. Therefore, I am returning the scoop to you in the hopes that you can find a use for it. I don’t need it, and most of the people I know do not need a brand new scoop each time we buy a box of detergent.

There is another brand of laundry soap, Ecover, which includes a biodegradable cardboard scoop made out of recycled paper. This seems to be a better alternative to me, since the scoop can be recycled or composted at the end of its life. My usual store was sold out of Ecover this week, which is why I tried the CitraSuds instead. But I don’t think I will purchase another box of CitraSuds as long as I know there will be a plastic scoop inside.

I appreciate all that you are doing for the environment and hope that you will choose to go even further by either eliminating the scoop entirely or opting for a biodegradable recycled paper scoop, like Ecover has.

Sincerely,


Beth Terry

 

Giving up the struggle: stories of ants and cats and hair products gone awry

I was planning to write about DIY hair care products this week. But so far, my experiments have been less than successful. Take, for example, the sugar water hairspray, exhibit left. Here's the recipe:

Dissolve 1 tablespoon sugar in a cup of water. Boil 3 minutes. Be sure the sugar is completely dissolved. Add 1 tablespoon vodka and 2-3 drops essential oil of your choice for scent. Pour into a spray bottle.

The instructions should also have said, "Keep out of the reach of ants!" But then, I guess the writer figured most sane people are aware that sugar attracts ants. Just to clarify, this hairspray ant invasion happened a month BEFORE last week's sugar incident. You'd think I would have learned. And you would be wrong.

So, about the hairspray. It didn't work anyway. Still looking for a plastic-free alternative. But that's not what I want to talk about in this post.

What I want to talk about is letting go of the struggle against reality, accepting things as they truly are, and finding ways to work with the world rather than against it. As I mentioned in my post about the ant invasion, constantly spraying them with vinegar was not working. I was in a never-ending battle with these creatures that was overwhelming and disheartening.

First of all, killing living beings every day is not fun. I'll admit there's a certain satisfaction in wiping them up and washing them down the drain. But it comes from a very dark place, the same as pouring salt on slugs and watching them sizzle or teasing tigers at the zoo. It doesn't make you a nice person. And an FPF reader, who also is one of Michael's co-workers and a Buddhist, was kind of horrified at the idea of mixing borax with sugar. Her reaction made me seriously reconsider anything lethal.

Second, the ants weren't actually invading me. They were trying to escape the rain. We know this because during normal dry weather, the ants disappear from my kitchen and stick to farming the scale on my potted citrus trees. (Ew!)

Third, the ants were in my cupboard and last month all over my hairspray because that's where the sugar was. Perhaps if the sugar were somewhere else...

So I did try the measure that I mentioned in my post: putting a cup of sugar in the cabinet under the sink to attract them away from my countertops and food cupboards. And guess what. It's working! The ants are all over the sugar under the sink (where I can't see them and they can't hurt anything) and almost completely gone from everywhere else. I guess once the rains have stopped for good, I'll start moving the sugar towards the back door and try to lead them back outside. Or maybe they'll just go on their own. We'll see.

Humans have different ways of describing the experience of living with reality rather than the fantasy of life as you wish it were. Going with the flow. Following the tao. Byron Katie, author of one of my favorite books, calls it Loving What Is.

"Loving what is" doesn't mean that when we see injustice or harm occurring in the world we sit passively by and do nothing. What it does mean is that we can work with things as they actually are rather than how we think they ought to be. Instead of thinking, "These ants should not be on my countertop!" I can say, "These ants should be on my countertop because that is what ants do when it rains outside and they have no other source of food. So I'll put some food for them down below and leave my countertops free for my own food." Or some other solution that recognizes the nature of ants rather than the idea of how we wish ants behaved.

Okay, so I learned this lesson a second time this week with my kitties. They are not allowed into our bedroom at night because they chase and bite and wrestle on top of our heads. (Why it is necessary for the wrestling to happen on our heads, we do not know.) So every morning, there are kitties outside the bedroom door scratching and mewing and oh so excited for us to come out and be with them, or at least give them food. And every morning, when I open the door, these kitties rush past me into the room and under the bed, where I spend many minutes trying to coax them out.

Why are they coming into the bedroom? Don't they know I'm leaving the bedroom? Don't they know the food is in the kitchen? Are they stupid? These are the kinds of grumblings that were running through me each morning. Until finally, I realized that I was expecting my kittens to think like people instead of kittens. So instead of trying to coax them out of the bedroom, I simply left them in there, closed the door, and walked away. It only took about 5 seconds before they were scratching on the door to be let out. And zero frustration for me.

So what does this have to do with plastic and environmental issues? Here's the thing. Plastic exists. People use it. People throw it away. It harms animals. It's also extremely convenient and useful. It is reality and no amount of wishful thinking will change that. If we're going to create a world without harm, we somehow have to work with reality the way it is and go from there, rather than grumbling and mumbling and getting angry with people who don't agree with us.

What does that mean? I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out. I do suspect that fighting doesn't work and that there's no winning "the war against plastic" any more than "the war against drugs" or "the war against terrorism." There's only seeing the world as it actually is, working with reality, and creating change from the inside out, starting with ourselves.

It's as my meditation teacher said at the last retreat pointing to his noggin, "The real garbage is in here." Perhaps once we realize that, the rest will come easily.
 

 

Uh oh! Rethinking Jar Lids

After all my hoopla about using hydrogen peroxide to clean the inside of tomato sauce jar lids, I'm now having second thoughts. Sorry to get prematurely excited.

A few days ago, after "bleaching" the tomato stains out of a couple of lids with hydrogen peroxide, I noticed that the smell was not completely gone. So I added another round of hydrogen peroxide and left them in the sun some more. Well, this time, not only did the tomato break down, but so did the coating on the inside of the lid! And that got me thinking...

Could the coating on the inside of prepared foods jar lids be the same stuff (polycarbonate) that lines the insides of aluminum cans these days? And if so, does using hydrogen peroxide on it cause it to leach Bisphenol-A?

I've been trying to find information on the web about what that coating is, but I'm having a hard time finding a definitive answer. So I sent e-mails to several companies (Classico, Newman's Own, Francesco Rinaldi) asking for information about the inside coating. I also e-mailed Jarden, the company that makes Ball canning jars and lids, to find out what their lids are made of.

Scott at Least Footprint wrote that he reuses spaghetti sauce jars and buys new lids for them. Maybe this is the better option, if the original lids are lined with something we don't want to reuse.

Other options I have found online are to line the inside of the lid with beeswax or to put a layer of parchment paper between the lid and the jar.

I will continue to update as I get further information. If anyone else has information about the coating inside the lids of glass jars, please share with the class. We are all here to learn.
 

 

Finally! How to clean pasta sauce jar lids Plus a handy cleaning tool I found

8/28/07 Update: It turns out that cleaning pasta sauce jar lids with hydrogen peroxide is not such a good idea. H202 eats through the coating inside the jar lid. Read more here.

Pasta sauce jars would be a great replacement for plastic food storage containers, if it weren't for the tomato stain and smell that penetrates the rubbery inside of the lid and causes any food in the jar to take on the taste and smell of the sauce. (Tomato-flavored soy milk, anyone?) For weeks, I tried everything I could think of to clean them out (short of chlorine bleach, which we don't buy) to no avail. Things I tried: white vinegar, baking soda, lemon juice, salt, vinegar and baking soda, lemon juice and baking soda, dish soap, scrubbing really hard. I even found a web page dedicated to this very topic, but none of the non-bleach suggestions worked for me.

And then I remembered reading somewhere a few weeks ago about leaving them out in the sun to get the smell out. So I tried it, and that didn't work either. But it did bring to mind a memory of me as a teenager sitting in the sun, trying to bleach my hair with hydrogen peroxide. So I poured a little peroxide into the lid, left it in the sun for a day, and voilà! Look how white it is! And no trace of tomato odor! I wonder how much peroxide it would have taken to turn my teenage hair that white.

Hydrogen peroxide is much more environmentally friendly than chlorine bleach. According to Greenlivingtips.com, "Most of the debate about chlorine bleach (sodium hypochlorite) stems from its ability to form more toxic byproducts such as dioxin, furans and other organochlorines when reacting with other elements. Hydrogen peroxide on the other hand, is simply water with an extra oxygen molecule (H2O2) and breaks down into oxygen and water.... Many industrial bleaching operations, such as those used in the production of paper, are increasingly moving towards the use of hydrogen peroxide for a greener bleaching process."

And yes, hydrogen peroxide does come in plastic containers. But I already have two bottles of it that I bought long before I was avoiding plastic, and it doesn't take much to clean a jar lid.

Now, here's my second cleaning tip for the day: Reusing all these narrow-necked glass jars and bottles, as well as my Klean Kanteen, requires a brush to clean them. If you already have a bottle brush, skip the following tip because why buy something new if you don't need to? Seriously, in my book, a plastic brush you already own is better than a new natural brush. But since I had been living the throw-away lifestyle, I didn't own a bottle brush because I didn't save any bottles or jars in the first place.

This is a natural coir (coconut husk) brush from Down To Earth Distributors. I bought mine at Rainbow Grocery, where the only packaging was a small tag attached to the handle. Plastic-free, vegan, and it works well. If you can't find anything similar in a local store, you can purchase this online at GreenFeet.

And please let me know if you have any environmentally-friendly cleaning tips to share. What works the best for you? I'd rather not experiment if I don't have to!
 

 

Store Report: Elephant Pharmacy

Just like Whole Foods, this natural pharmacy contains very few items that are not packaged in plastic. Recycled toilet paper in plastic. Recycled napkins in plastic. Natural cellulose sponges in plastic. Natural cleaning products in plastic. Natural cosmetics, drugs, foods, bric-a-brac in plastic. Here are the few plastic-free items that I found and bought:

2 boxes of BioBags, 3 gallon size. BioBags are made from corn and are 100% biodegradable and compostable. We are going to use them in our kitchen garbage can instead of the plastic grocery bags that we have been using. Hopefully, we won't be putting much into them anyway. We put all of our food waste into the green compost bin; we put all of our paper, cans, and curbside-recyclable plastic into the gray recycling bin; and since the beginning of this plastic project, I have been saving all the non-recyclable plastic "for later."

Ever since I heard about Casabella natural cellulose scrubbers, I've been searching for them in area stores. I finally found them at Elephant Pharmacy... in a 3-pack packaged in plastic! Feh! I stood in front of the scrubber display and pondered this dilemma for a full 5 minutes before I noticed the cute Loofah-Art scrubbers above them. (Short people like me often miss things that are over our heads.) Loofah-Art scrubbers are made from organically-grown loofah, and the only bit of plastic in the packaging is the tiny thingy that connects the loofah to the cardboard backing card. (What are those tiny thingies called?) I thought I could deal with a tiny thingy of plastic. So this scrubber is what we will use to clean our dishes from now on.

And finally, I spent way too much ($19.99) for this Bag-E-Wash plastic bag dryer. You put it on the counter or hang it under the cabinet and leave your washed plastic bags on it to dry. It could be useful. Or it could be a good idea that gets pushed to the back of the counter and gathers dust. I'm not much of a dish-washer to begin with. Just ask Michael. Yeah, I do my dishes, half-heartedly, eventually, and this could be just too much for my non-domestic nature to handle. But why think negatively? It could be fun, right? Or it could be that Michael will do it! Now there's a great idea!

And here's an awesome looking product that I didn't buy: Burt's Bees Rosemary Mint shampoo bar. It smells wicked cool, and it comes in a cardboard box with zero plastic. I didn't buy it because I'm already using the Re-Incarnate shampoo bar from Lush (more on that later.) But it's on my list. As soon as the current shampoo bar is gone, that thing is mine!

Eventually, I found myself once again in a toothpaste aisle opening boxes of toothpaste hoping to find something without plastic. No go. I don't think such a thing exists anymore. Not in the U.S., anyway. And no mouthwash that's not in a plastic bottle either. So when I got home, I looked up recipes for homemade tooth powder, and here's one I found on the Yes! Magazine Web site:

Combine equal parts salt and baking soda. Add a tiny bit of stevia for sweetness (1/16th tsp stevia per 2 tablespoons baking soda/salt.) For flavor, add a few drops of peppermint oil or 1/2 tablespoon cinnamon. (I wonder if peppermint extract would work as well as oil.)

So, I'm gonna do it. If I haven't found any other alternative before my current tube of toothpaste runs out, I'm just going to make my own. Martha Stewart will be so proud.