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.