A Retraction

I was confused! Don't start sending old toothpaste tubes to Tom's of Maine!


I don't know where I got the idea that Rick was mailing his empty tubes to the East Coast. I might have gotten them mixed up with Preserve brand toothbrushes, which come from the store in a pre-addressed package that you use to mail the old toothbrush to the company for recycling when you're done with it. Rick just takes the old Tom's tubes to our local recycle center. He chooses Tom's because the tubes are metal rather than plastic. This is what the Tom's of Maine website says about its toothpaste tubes:


Tubes: Recyclable aluminum
Cap: Polypropylene #5
Threading: LDPE #4
Box: Recycled/Recyclable paperboard -- 40-65% post consumer
Insert: Recycled/Recyclable paper -- 100% post consumer

Tom's contributes to all sorts of good causes, manufactures and packages its products as responsibly as it can, and treats its employees well. So it's a good toothpaste choice for a variety of reasons. We have some concerns about aluminum, which we've eliminated from our kitchen because of research linking it to Alzheimer's. But this is what we're doing at the moment -- at least for one toothpaste tube's worth of time.

The Tyranny of Toothpaste, and Toilet Paper Redux

Our post on toilet paper attracted so much attention I thought I'd better address some of the points raised. Yes, we wash the diapers in hot water -- the only items in our household to get such laundry treatment. No, we don't cut them into to smaller sizes. We tried that, but the inner fibers unraveled in the wash and came out a tangled mess. We also discovered that the thickest diapers are actually too thick to be -- how shall I say this? -- sufficiently pliable. Thin diapers are better. No, we're not sure the environmental trade-off (plastic generation vs. water usage) is worth it (we're not trying to save the whole world -- not this year, anyway). And the ew factor is really nothing, guys. At the risk of over-sharing, I have to say that the nice soft cloth is rather an improvement over paper...

Pre-industrial ass-wiping doesn't bother me a bit. On the other hand, modern dentistry has, I believe, improved the quality of human life a great deal in the last half-century, and I'm not inclined to mess with it. We've been fretting from the start about toothpaste tubes. Rick found some recipes for homemade toothpaste on line, but further research cast doubt on its efficacy. Here's our compromise: Tom's of Maine brand toothpaste will take its used tubes back and recycle them. Rick's been sending his empty tubes back for years, so I am joining him in becoming a Tom's loyalist. The toothpaste is a little more expensive than Crest, but how much toothpaste do you go through in a year? And should I raise a complaint about Wintermint, the  only flavor they make their toothpaste-for-sensitive-teeth in, Rick is likely to respond: "Yeah. They don't have these problems in Darfur."

That's How We Roll

We have hit on a solution to the problem of toilet paper that will don't imagine will attract many imitators. The problem of toilet paper being that the 6- and 12- and 24-packs come encased in plastic. We could, of course, buy rolls singly, wrapped in paper. But that's hard on the wallet.

So we've opted instead for diapers.

A local diaper service sells clean, second-hand diapers by the dozen for use as rags. We bought a stack and are keeping them in a basket by the potty. After use, they go into a lidded stainless-steel garbage pail, and from there to the wash.

I hear readers now going, "Eeeewwww..." We are a squeamish people, we Americans. We want our caca to disappear on sight. But really, this new system is no weirder than using cloth diapers with a baby. It's a lot less grody than cleaning a cat box. It's cheap, it frees up space in the linen closet, and it produces no plastic waste.

And we get bonus points for saving trees.

Something of a Disaster

I've just returned from a conference in Key West, and have many Hail Marys to say, because although the conference was a great success, The Experiment completely went spla. Parameter # 6 states that we will cut ourselves slack while traveling, but I thought I could do better than I did.

Things fell apart as soon as I hit the airport. I bought my usual airport treat, a cup of tea and a scone at a certain well-known coffee chain, specifying that I did not want a lid on the cup. That message failed to get through, and when I called it to their attention, the baristas refused to remove the lid and reuse it, even though I had not touched the cup. I could see that a manager had put the fear of the State Public Health Division in them.

During my layover in Dallas-Ft. Worth I chose to eat lunch at a restaurant specifically on the basis of the pretty pictures showing food served on real plates with real cutlery. But when the food arrived, it was served on plastic with a plastic fork and knife. And a straw -- ARGH! -- in my drinking water.

My conference was in a resort and so all the meals and drinks there were served in durables. But Friday night we went out on the town, and the Margaritas arrived in plastic cups.

Finally, I spent an afternoon walking around town sightseeing in the pouring rain, and my sneakers got incredibly stinky. I dried them out and tried to freshen them up with a bit of soap, but to no avail. They were too foul to wear on the way home, and too foul to stuff into my suitcase with my good clothes. So I wrapped them in a new plastic laundry bag.

I did bring every bit of plastic I'd used home to recycle -- yes, carrying my used Margarita cup with me everywhere all evening on Friday -- but it was painful to lose control of The Experiment so thoroughly. I just have to keep muttering to myself "Parameter # 6, Pararmeter # 6, Parameter # 6."

Drawing a Line

For several years now I have subscribed to a certain women's fitness magazine. I like it all right: the healthy-eating tips, the workout how-to's, and the encouragement to keep on keepin' on are all mildly useful and make for good, lite reading on the treadmill.

But. These magazines are chockablock full of ads for -- can I just call them what they are? -- stupid plastic shit nobody needs. Hair smoothers. Wrinkle hiders. Pre-packaged snack foods. In my most recent issue, which is 210 pages long, I counted 151 pages partly or entirely devoted to ads, and another 29 pages of health and fitness "articles" that promote specific products, complete with photos, urls and celebrity endorsements. It's safe to assume the manufacturers pay for these product placements.

I understand that magazines turn a profit by selling advertising space. But I feel bombarded, and suspicious of sales pitches masquerading as journalism. And I've been increasingly annoyed by the disconnect between the "health" that is promoted in the pieces and the mountains of garbage they encourage us to generate, especially since some of the publication is devoted to "green" living.

So recently when my subscription ran out, I declined to renew. Just as well: new issues were always delivered in a plastic sheath.

10-10-10: Blogging for Social Change

Today we join tens of thousands of other writers, activists and concerned citizens for International Climate Action day, a day to raise awareness, pressure lawmakers and do something concrete to lower our ppm -- the parts per million of carbon dioxide molecules in our atmosphere that are trapping greenhouse gases and dangerously warming the planet.

Portland alone must have hosted half a dozen 10-10-10 events today. The one we chose to attend was a styrofoam recycling roundup at a local Episcopal church. We had a full carload of block polystyrene, hardly any of it ours -- Rick makes a point of picking it up when he sees it around town in dumpsters and recycling bins (the stuff isn't recyclable curbside here, but that doesn't stop some people from leaving it on the curb in their yellow bins). He keeps it in a friend's basement (thanks, Etienne!) and when he's amassed enough of it, he takes it to a recycler in town and pays $5-10 to have it recycled. But this event was free, and we liked participating in a community action.

What's the connection between styrofoam and climate change? Mainly, it's that plastic, like any product, takes energy to produce, and energy consumption almost always involves carbon emissions. So in addition to the environmental hazards that bookend plastic use -- on the one end, degradation involved in drilling for oil, from which plastic is made, and at the other end, degradation of habitat and endangerment to wildlife -- plastic contributes to the most pressing environmental issue of our time.

Of course, the production of all the alternatives to plastic also consume energy. Arguably it takes more energy to make glass, for example, than to make plastic, and it certainly takes more fossil fuels to transport glass than plastic because it's so much heavier. Glass, however, has a much longer shelf-life. Rick and I keep many of our glass containers indefinitely; pasta jars become jars for holding popcorn or rice (bought in bulk); mustard and jam jars get passed on to a friend who raises honey bees. Plastic tubs become leftover containers, but plastic quality degrades over time and eventually, out they go. There's a reason the words in the slogan "reduce, reuse, recycle" are in that order. Recycling is good, and we've been zealous and expert recyclers for some time. Reusing is better, and this is the part of the slogan where we are hanging out a lot these days. Best of all is not to buy stuff in the first place. That's the big challenge for the Experiment -- trying to lead a Make It From Scratch life in a pre-fab, single-use culture.

One thing that is already clear from our experiment is that there are no perfect solutions. Every choice involves a trade-off, and it's not always easy to measure our impact or discern which is the least of multiple evils. The best we can strive for is to be mindful -- to inform ourselves, make thoughtful decisions, and raise our voices together with those of other people who care.

The Nose Knows

Rick blew his nose on the last of the extant kleenex this morning, and we are turning to alternatives that do not come in cardboard boxes with a mouth of plastic film.

We are becoming throwbacks, each to a different time period. I myself have opted to swab my sniffer with a cotton hankie, as though it were the nineteenth century. Rick has another approach. For decades he has made a habit of squirreling away all the restaurant and fast-food napkins that come his way. Not that he pockets extras for his personal use -- but, barring a barbecue-sauce disaster, he figures the paper serviette that accompanies his food is good for another mouth-wipe or two. He stashes these in his backpack and then, when he gets home, into a paper bag, and dips into these for a variety of uses. I know -- it's a weird old bachelor miser habit. It makes Rick look some Depression-era survivor. He maintains he learned it as a young man from one dear departed Reverend Emmet Johnson, who no doubt was a child in the 30s. Turns out that the greenest 21st-century practices look a lot like the use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without ethic of generations past.

Bag the Bag

The city recently proposed a ban on plastic grocery bags, following the lead of San Francisco, Brownsville, two counties in Hawaii and the entire nation of Ireland. This being Portland, we saw quite a lot of support for the ban. And this being America, we also saw quite a lot of dissent. The newspaper was full of angry letters to the editor, particularly from dog owners who can't imagine how they will pick up poop without a steady supply of bags from grocery runs, but also from indignant shoppers who simply find it handier to cart their goods in plastic handle bags than in paper or in canvas.

You'd think from reading these letters that the Right to Convenience were enshrined in our constitution. But that attitude didn't surprise me. What surprised me was the implication that plastic bags are precious and hard to come by.

My own experience has been that simply by washing, drying and saving the plastic bags that come into our lives, we end up in very short order with far more bags than we can store. (We have one of those wooden bag-dryers; it lives on the kitchen counter and dries about eight bags at a time.) We've never used plastic grocery bags, and in the old days (before we stopped buying any plastic) our plastic-bag drawer was always full. We regularly recycled bags because there was no place else to put so many.

Now that even fewer are coming our way, we aren't moving as many out of the house -- and when The Experiment began we went through the collection and set aside the best bags to hang on to. I'm confident they will last the year. If they don't, we won't have to look very hard to find second-hand ones. We will not have to start taking virgin bags from the supermarket.

A Path

I decided to spend my September freebie (see Parameter # 5: we each get to make one plastic purchase per month) on seeds for the garden. It seemed fitting that if I were going to buy something in plastic, it would be something that would ultimately make a positive environmental contribution.

Slowly over the last few years (ever since my lawn mower bit the dust) I have been converting our front lawn to flower beds. I killed the grass by getting 50 or 60 cast-off burlap bags from a local coffee roaster and spreading them out over the lawn. When the grass was dead, I started planting other stuff.

The usual argument made in favor of the un-lawn is that grass -- America's most commonly-grown crop -- devours fertilizers and water. We've never used fertilizers on our lawn, and we let it go dormant in the summer, so it really wasn't using resources. But today, instead of a monoculture, the front yard is a riot of species. The soil, teeming with critters micro and macro, is healthier than that of the typical American grass lawn. Many different plants live here, attracting beneficial spiders and insects, including pollinators, and the wild birds that eat them. Biodiversity is important, even in the city, and our little garden space is making its contribution to the health of our bioregion. Plus it's a lot more interesting to look at than grass.

Over the years, however, I've discovered that a garden path is a useful thing. I've tried making them from pea gravel, from bark dust, and from straw, but in this climate those all get quickly taken over by weeds. So I've turned back to grass as the most viable material for path-making.

Now, typical lawn grass grows so quickly in Portland's wet, warmish springs that it has to be mowed twice a week, a fact I bitterly resented in my lawn days of old. So I've taken to making paths of an alternative called Enviro-lawn, which is comprised of a mixture of fescue, ryegrass, yarrow, clover and small wildflowers. It makes a lush, slightly meadowy carpet that grows slowly. I've made two successful paths with it, and now I want to make more. So I spent my September free pass on a plastic bag of Enviro-lawn seed.


I bought some plants, too, and of course they came in plastic pots -- but the folks at the nursery said they would take them back and reuse them if I returned the empties, so I did.

Snack Attack

I think I have mentioned that cookies are one of Rick's staple foods. An important holiday food is the potato chip (and its similarly fried and packaged relatives.) Chips are not a daily habit, and Rick doesn't eat them alone -- he's a social eater. But it's baseball season, a time when boisterous, hungry men sometimes appear in our living room bearing plastic bags full of salty crunchables and creating a bit of a moral dilemma: be true to the experiment, or be true to old friends and the traditions that bring us together?

Luckily, just this year Frito-Lay has come out with a compostable chip bag made of plant fibers. I'm not in the business of promoting potato chips and their makers. I'm just saying --  if you feel the need to have chips with your ball game and you're trying to avoid plastic, you have options.

The new bag is unbelievably noisy. I don't think you could hear the game if you ate straight from the bag. And it doesn't solve certain problems (such as high sodium content and the Mariners' pathetic offensive play.)
Also there remains the question of how to compost this bag. The instructions on the back state that it requires a hot compost pile, which we don't have. (We compost, but we're lazy composters who don't turn or moisten our pile or pay any attention to the ratio of nitrogen to carbon. So our compost pile is slow and cool.)

This is a problem that's turning up in lots of places as biodegradable alternatives to plastic appear on the market. Here's an example: the college where I teach introduced service ware made of cornstarch in its cafeterias last year. It's terrific that we're not using plastic spoons and forks any more, but what becomes of the corn utensils? Currently they go in the garbage, where their biodegradability remains purely theoretical: no matter how organically grown, stuff doesn't break down in the landfill, because there's not enough oxygen under the weight of all that refuse.

I think solutions to these problems will come on line over time. This year, one of the campuses of my college has purchased a "Rocket composter" to break down its cafeteria food waste. The Rocket will probably be able to handle cornstarch service ware, and if all goes well, the other campuses will get their own Rockets. And the city of Portland has started a pilot project to collect home compost just like it does yard debris. Perhaps eventually we'll be able to put our compostable chip bags in a curbside bin.

Meanwhile, we're making a noisy little collection of those crinkly plant fiber bags, and the pennant race can proceed with its snacking traditions intact.