Sustainable Shopping 4 - It's Common Sense

 

Common Sense Behaviour in the Modern World

• 2 – 3 centuries ago in the early industrial revolution the horrible pollution poured out in a few valleys by newly invented industrial processes wasn't enough to have a worldwide impact. It more or less hung around and made life nasty for the locals.

• It's difficult to know what the world population was back then but estimates vary between 600 and 900 million. Let's say below one billion anyway. See https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/international-programs/historical-est-worldpop.html

• One century ago my granddad was age 30, my dad was a baby and the world population had doubled in the meantime to 1.8 billion, roughly a quarter of what it is now.

• Then, only a small fraction of that quarter sized population were living as we do now, as consumers, requiring many resources and industrial processes to service their lifestyle.

• Only a tiny percentage of that small fraction of that quarter sized population travelled by car, using fossil fuel and spreading exhaust gases around.

• Only a miniscule percentage of that small fraction of that quarter sized population flew in aeroplanes, pouring gases out into the atmosphere. Compare this to 2020 when the number of passenger flights 'plummeted' to 1.8 billion - a number equal to the entire world population then - because of the huge decline caused by coronavirus. (According to the business statistics provider Statista.)

• Then, plastics were in the early stages of development, and had (and have) much to offer, but weren't yet known to create mountains of indestructible litter.

• Then, it made sense for an ordinary person to aspire to benefit from these things. Certainly, half that time ago, by which time the population had almost doubled again (3.4bn), I did.

But I look now at our vastly expanded population – doubled yet again - and I think, seven billion of us haven't room to chuck shit about like a few of our ancestors had.

***

We have to dramatically clean up our act so that we can all enjoy a quality standard of living without suffocating in our own crap. Those new technologies being exploited by our forebears were early versions, primitive by modern standards, and usually dirty. 'Where there's muck there's money', as they used to say in my part of the world. That was all they had back then. Building from those beginnings we have reached a point today where we have the expertise to do things in much better, more refined, ways. So let's do it - it's common sense.

What I don't think is common sense is a belief that we should remain tied to those old technologies because "I'm making money/I've always done it that way/I don't want to think about it".

What I don't think is common sense is a belief that a nice beardy man in the sky has it all under control and will rescue us from the consequences of our actions.

What I don't think is common sense is a belief I can buy an island and hide from it all.

What I don't think is commonsense is a belief we can all jump on a space ship and go and live on Mars.

What I don't think is common sense is a belief that we can all go and live under a plastic dome somewhere.

What I don't think is common sense is a belief that the planet will rebalance itself in a way to suit our convenience. (I have posted about this:
https://whysgetsserious.blogspot.com/2015/02/about-environment-1-one-liners-and-off.html?m=1 )

We have a choice - behave like the species which has the gift of being able to learn, see ahead, plan, innovate and organise for the future - or behave like just another dumb animal that obliviously grazed chomped and shit its way through the landscape until it was all used up and the next dumb animal came along.

About Sustainable Shopping 3: In the Kitchen, Wiping Scrubbing and Scraping

Wiping

Kitchen roll can be paper made from new wood, or recycled; it can be bleached or unbleached, dyed or undyed.

Bleached and dyed paper made from new wood is surely pointless for these jobs. It's using forestry which could go for something better than a few seconds of blotting before being binned and buried. If it is FSC approved wood, well so what – wasting wood is still wrong even if it is FSC approved wood. Bleaching and colouring involve pollution from chlorine and other chemicals. It's not wallpaper - the look of it doesn't matter, there's no justification for the pollution involved in making it look pretty.

Recycled paper is much better because, apart from not wasting a valuable resource it requires less processing. It should of course be unbleached and uncoloured.

I shouldn't have much trouble cleaning up my act in this respect then, as most supermarkets have at least one line of recycled paper kitchen towels and they are available in bulk online. But ... ...

What about 'non paper'?

Reusable 'non paper' cleaning cloths are enthusiastically marketed by 'ethical' suppliers – made from cotton or bamboo (i.e. cellulose derived from bamboo). Is it better to use these than it is to use paper?

Well here's another question: why would we go out and buy squares of cloth to wipe stuff up with? I am old and I experienced the transition after World War 2 from deprivation and austerity to the present era of plenty (at least for many of us). Back then we used to cut up old cloth items such as sheets and towels, which had come to the end of their useful lives, for just this purpose. True, they might only have been good for a few goes, or even only one, before they needed washing. But they were plentiful so they could be lobbed into a bucket until there were enough to make a washer load. (In the pre-washer days my mum used to boil them.)

We have to be careful that, in attempting to solve one problem, we don't create another, as this product from Ethical Superstore seems to do. The Ecozone Multisurface Cloth is marketed as a means of wiping without having to use chemical products such as surface cleaners. But it carries a health warning: 'Please note: This product contains microplastics'.

Sometimes navigating a way through this kind of cost benefit trade off is complex and difficult. But surely not here. I certainly won't be introducing yet another source of damage into the environment in order to save me from using soapy water or a sustainable surface cleaner.

See:

https://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/products/ecozone/ecozone-microfibre-multi-surface-cloth---80g/

Also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics

and:

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/microplastics.html

Here's Ethical Consumer on the Subject:

https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/search?keywords=microplastics

So: I see the sense of using washable fabric wiping cloths instead of single use paper. But I'm wary of buying products manufactured for that purpose, first because I would have to verify the sustainability of the material used (see: Bamboo )  and second because it seems a waste of money. I'm going to do what my mum did in the olden days – I'll cut up old stuff to use. I realise, though, there are times when hygiene requires disposable stuff, and I will have some unbleached recycled paper towels for occasional use.

Scrubbers Scourers and Brushes

What about when I need something a bit more aggressive than a cloth? For years, like most people I guess, I have used those sponge blocks that have on one side a harder more abrasive kind of sponge. Now that I'm aware of the problem of microfibres getting into the environment (of which more, in a separate post, coming soon) I realise, just by looking at them, that they are a serious shedder of those things. The two shown here, used and unused from the same pack, show just how much

microplastic I have

sent down the

plughole into the wider world, to wash around out there forever. Who knows, I might end up eating it in my fish dinner one day. And now it's no longer any use, the remaining bit will be discarded into landfill, along with countless others, to remain there for the rest of eternity. And I reach for another …

Well not this time. There have always been metal versions of course, with or without soap, and they work very well. To be honest I don't know much about the environmental implications of the manufacture of these things. But they have to be better than plastic. They will in time rust

away to become once more the Earth's most common element, iron, I suppose. At least if I end up eating that it'll do me some good.

But I should be able to do better. There are natural products which can do the job.

For instance the dear old loofah! Without knowing quite what it is, I was always familiar with it as a bathroom 'sponge' of course - but I find that as well as having a comedy name, it's a plant, providing natural material for all sorts of products. Here's an alternative to those foam kitchen sponges:

https://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/products/loofco/loofco-washing-up-pad---twin-pack/

And I see that Ethical Superstore has much else made of loofah. Other retailers are of course available but I'm not going to cite any more – they're easily Google-able.

Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write: You can grow your own loofah!

See: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/knightshayes/features/grow-your-own-kitchen-sponges-loofahs

Wikipedia on loofah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luffa

Instead of the ubiquitous plastic dishwashing brush this looks a far better product, two suppliers here:

https://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/products/ecoliving/ecoliving-fsc-100-wooden-dish-brush-with-replaceable-head/

https://www.boobalou.co.uk/plastic-free-brushes/page/1/

Bearing in mind the untrustworthiness of eco-claims I checked this out. Its bristles are made of something called Tampico and as far as I can tell it seems a thoroughly praiseworthy product. (Until some asshole invents a way of pouring corrosives all over it to make cellulose gloop at least.)

See:

https://www.tampicofiber.net/fiber-production

and Wikipedia, which says:

'Ixtle, also known by the trade name Tampico fiber, is a stiff plant fiber obtained from a number of Mexican plants, chiefly species of Agave and Yucca...'

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtle

Coconut fibre (coir) has long been a useful natural product. We have long been wiping our feet on it and it has many uses around the house. Here's an example:

https://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/products/loofco/loofco-oven-tray---pan-scraper/

This one, though, shows up our need for awareness of the fact that our vast population can do little without heading into environmental difficulties. Coir is an undoubtedly sustainable product, properly handled. But things can go wrong. The traditional method of production does create some pollution, though nowhere near as noxious as rayon for instance. But a huge switch of consumption to it from plastics would amplify that pollution possibly to a dangerous level. There are, though, more up to date production methods which minimise pollution. I think this will be a pattern in the future with most natural products we use: caution, and the constant refining of production methods. There's a very good summary here:

https://ecoworldonline.com/coir-the-natural-fiber-from-coconut-husk/

Quick Reference Summary:

• For wiping jobs it's time to set aside pointlessly decorated and bleached virgin paper.

• I will treat manufactured 'non-paper' products with suspicion. They unnecessarily use resources and might even, in some cases, be worse than the problem they mean to solve.

• For everyday use I will make my own wiping cloths out of scrap material.

• I will keep a small amount of recycled paper towel around the place for those few occasions when circumstances demand something disposable.

• For tough scouring and scraping jobs I will use natural materials such as coir, loofah and Tampico.

• I understand that, as demand rises, it's possible for even basically inoffensive natural products to become polluting if they are not produced and processed in the right way.