I talk a good talk about reducing plastic, but it's *hard*

[conuly]

My mother has a habit of resenting things. It is not possible to, say, accidentally take her towel without her resenting this. Well, she's getting better, but I still dislike the word immensely.

However, it is the only word appropriate for what I'm about to say. I resent (yes!) that in order to buy in bulk (as is recommended for Saving the Planet), I must therefore buy plastic. I resent that it is possible to either buy small, expensive glass jars or large, inexpensive plastic jars - but no large glass jars. I resent that if I wanted to get the glass bottle of vinegar in the supermarket, I'd have to buy the name brand, which is more than twice the price for the same amount of vinegar. I resent that if I carefully rebag all the groceries so that the single roll of toilet paper is not in its own separate double bag, the bags I removed it from are thrown into the garbage. And I really resent that it's so damn hard to find metal toothpaste tubes, especially when the plastic ones don't roll up nicely and are therefore harder to use.

Honestly, it's enough to make me want to throw in the towel now and go whole hog with my energy consumption on the theory that the sooner the end comes, the better.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Y'know, 'tis the season for real apple cider, the home-made kind, which is generally sold in big glass jugs. If you have apple cider, you can very easily make apple cider vinegar (http://www.vinegarman.com/VinegarMaking.shtml) for a fraction of the price of store-bought.

You also don't need no steenking paper-or-plastic grocery bags - get yourself half a dozen string bags (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=string+bags&btnG=Google+Search); they're very cheap and they last practically forever.

You could also make your own toothpaste (http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howtos/ht/toothpaste.htm), which would save you a LOT of money and would keep you from having to have any kind of toothpaste tube at all. Or you could save your old plastic toothpaste tubes and refill them with home-made toothpaste, if having an actual tube is important to you. Alas, I don't think there's any way to re-fill a metal toothpaste tube.

The corporate bastards think they've got us all over a barrel - that we have no choice but to pay whatever they ask for their products (however shoddy, wasteful or loaded with poisons they may be) because we're too spoiled-rotten to do without them and too lazy and incompetent to find or make alternatives. It's enough to make me want to go whole hog and just stop buying ANY of their products, EVAR - to buy only local family-farmed food, to formulate all my own household and personal-care products, to walk or bike instead of driving, to only purchase items made by small Earth-friendly 'cottage-industry' businesses...

... I used to live that way pretty-much all the time, back in the 70's and 80's. We're still pretty Green here, though admittedly it takes more 'spoons' to live Totally Green than I've currently got - especially since the rest of my household views that as fanaticism rather than as mindfulness, and is not willing to live that way. One does the best one can, I guess, one day at a time, and sets as good an example as possible under the circumstances.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

I can't think how you might refill a plastic tube, but refilling the old metal ones was easy--you just opened up the butt end, shoved in your paste, and crimped the end again.

That said, just brush your teeth with salt & soda. Every dentist I've talked to says it's just as good as boughten paste, and it's hella cheaper. (If you absolutely must have mint flavor, add a dash of peppermint extract.)

[conuly]

Baking soda does everything. Jenn right now uses it as deodorant, which I may try when mine runs out. I'm thinking, actually, that with the right amount of jars, you could have quite a variety - baking soda with rose petals, with lavender, with I don't know.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

That has given me a wonderful idea--rose-flavored baking soda toothpaste. I adore the flavor of roses and rosewater.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Ah... refilling plastic tubes, you flatten them out to empty them of air as much as possible, then squirt in the stuff with a cake-decorator bag.

I have toothpaste in metal tubes - Tom of Maine's and JAson - but by the time they're empty, they're always pretty-well trashed; tight-crimped rolls with little holes where the metal's been stressed too much. I suppose they'd still be re-useable, though; just have to put a Baggie or something around them so they wouldn't make a mess when you squeezed.

I have major sensory issues with toothbrushing, so salt-and-soda, however flavored, doesn't work for me - the flavor's not the problem; it's the texture, and the sound the dry, scratchy powder makes against my teeth. *shudders* I need actual toothpaste, with a smooth, silent, consistent texture, or - despite my best intentions and efforts - my self-care routines would come to a dead stop every day when I got to the toothbrushing part of the program.

I haven't tried the salt-soda-glycerin recipe posted above, but it seems like it might blend up smooth enough to be acceptable. My personal-care routines are 'iffy' enough as it is, though, so I don't fix what ain't broke. The most expensive tube of toothpaste ever manufactured still costs a whole lot less than missing work because trying to brush my teeth uses up all the spoons (http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=156) I needed to get me out the door.