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Thread: Plastic plastic everywhere, challenge

  1. #111
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lainey View Post
    Good points.
    I was thinking also of my former co-worker. We worked in an office with the usual coffee, water cooler, and Styrofoam cups set-up. He liked to go to the water cooler several times a day and use a new Styrofoam cup each time. I said something to him once or twice, light-heartedly, about buying his own cup to re-use. His answer was, Nah, I like to do this to tick off the liberals. Which I think meant me since I was the most liberal in the office and the only one who said anything.
    So that was a financially comfortable engineer who had associated the slightest environmental effort as being a liberal which he certainly was not and did not want to be associated with. Okay then.
    Interesting that people don't stop to think that piles of plastic don't care if you are liberal or conservative; effects of climate change don't avoid muslims over catholics. It's the garbage that doesn't care about us - i.e. emotionless stuff.
    To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer." Mahatma Gandhi
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  2. #112
    Senior Member iris lilies's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lainey View Post
    Good points.
    I was thinking also of my former co-worker. We worked in an office with the usual coffee, water cooler, and Styrofoam cups set-up. He liked to go to the water cooler several times a day and use a new Styrofoam cup each time. I said something to him once or twice, light-heartedly, about buying his own cup to re-use. His answer was, Nah, I like to do this to tick off the liberals. Which I think meant me since I was the most liberal in the office and the only one who said anything.
    So that was a financially comfortable engineer who had associated the slightest environmental effort as being a liberal which he certainly was not and did not want to be associated with. Okay then.
    While myth might attribute concerns of recycling to the liberal mindsent, living as I do in an electric blue city, and seeing what I see in the recycling dumpsters, it is clear to me that so much concern about sustainability is posturing and virture signalling. Were liberals sincerely interested in appropriate trash disposal, I wouldnt constantly be removing styrofoam from the recycling dumpster, plastic trash bags from the green dumpster, tree branches from the landfill dumpster.

    I am going thru a little dustup with a friend who is hellbent on having our plant society lectured by Missouri Botanical Garden staff on recycling at the gardens. My attendance at meetings is spotty for just this reason—we have to endure yammering about non-plant society issues. My time has value and I do not wish to be bored. I have 0 interest in “learning” about this, and throw in some sanctimony into the presentation and I am outta there.
    Last edited by iris lilies; 12-20-18 at 9:48am.

  3. #113
    Senior Member iris lilies's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tybee View Post
    For anyone worried about laundry packaging, I urge you to do what we do and make our own laundry detergent. Google the Duggars laundry detergent recipe. Borax and washing soda come in cardboard boxes and you use those boxes very slowly. Soap is the other ingredient, and comes wrapped in paper.
    The easiest way to avoid plastic detergent bottles is to make your own.
    I wouldn't say the easiest way to avoid plastic detergent bottles is to make your own.

    We just buy powdered detergent in boxes. THAT is easy.

  4. #114
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    I don't know if it is just stores here or what but it is almost impossible to find dishwasher or laundry detergent in cardboard boxes. It is either plastic or pods.

  5. #115
    Senior Member iris lilies's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by pinkytoe View Post
    I don't know if it is just stores here or what but it is almost impossible to find dishwasher or laundry detergent in cardboard boxes. It is either plastic or pods.
    I agree in that our store doesnt seem to stock many boxes of Tide, it is mostly liquid stuff. But boxed detergent is on the bottom shelf.

  6. #116
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    I have found I enjoy not having to buy the boxed, even in cardboard, which is how it came when I was a kid. I have a 5 gallon bucket in the laundry room where we make the detergent. So when it's empty, we make more detergent. There is no disposal of the cardboard, and it only takes about 20 minutes to make the detergent, which lasts a couple of months.

    To me, that is easier and a neater solution than shopping, with less to throw away, but YMMV.

  7. #117
    Senior Member Rogar's Avatar
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    I was thinking the other day about The Graduate movie where the sage business man whispers into the recent graduates ear about the great future in plastics. Sort of a famous line in the day. And then when you would be offered the choice between plastic and paper and you would save a tree and pick plastic. Seems like just in the last several months plastics have become the new environmental battle. I took my plastic bags to a new trendy grocery store to recycle. They told me they didn't have a recycle program for plastic bag because they only offered paper bags. I guess they didn't notice all their rolls of plastic bags to bag produce.

  8. #118
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    I made my own produce bags out of some netting-type material and I have also seen sets for sale in my grocery store. I haven't researched it, but I have been told that the material on the newer kind of reusable bags is also extremely hard to compost. I'm not accepting any more - even if free - and am going back to my cloth bags. I, personally, just feel better using the cloth over any of the other stuff any more.
    To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer." Mahatma Gandhi
    Be nice whenever possible. It's always possible. HH Dalai Lama
    In a world where you can be anything - be kind. Unknown

  9. #119
    Senior Member Teacher Terry's Avatar
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    So my son was saying now that China is no longer taking our plastic most ends up in landfills. I have been recycling for 30 years so researched it and yes only 9% of plastics we put in recycling doesn’t end up in the landfill. Plus if you put the lid on a plastic bottle it goes to the landfill since it cannot be recycled. Pretty depressing. When I lived in a small condo I had a bin in my extra bedroom for recycling, had to drive it across town and sort it.

  10. #120
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    Here is a helpful PBS pictorial on recycling; I wonder too how much of the oil we are fracking ends up as plastic:
    http://apps.npr.org/plastics-recycling/

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