Friday, July 10, 2009Cut Down on Plastic Packaging
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Sorry to get gross here, but a while back I was doing a volunteer river cleanup on the banks of the Potomac. Washington, D.C., has a big problem with sewage overflow when it rains, and it had rained a lot that season. I was making my way through the brush in the C&O Canal National Park along the mighty river, picking up trash left by the many fishermen and homeless people who use the park. Then I came across a sewage drain. Cutting a swath across the ground directly in front of that sewage drain was a mass of plastic tampon applicators.
There were easily 500 of them covering the ground between the sewer and the Potomac River. It was stunning. Who, honestly, thinks it's okay to flush a tampon applicator down the toilet? (Not to mention that the Potomac supplies D.C. with its drinking water.) But I digress. I just did a Google search for plastic tampon applicators and the first result was a story with the headline "Tampon Applicators Flood Canadian Shores." The explanation was: "Canadian officials say plastic tampon applicators clutter Halifax, Nova Scotia's shores after the closure of a sewage treatment plant and removal of filters."
Certainly we should have a massive -- and uncomfortable -- public-information campaign to get women to stop this, well, rude practice. But realistically, it's time to make the plastic applicator obsolete. It's the perfect symbol of our disregard: something that is used for, say, about 20 seconds and then tossed away. I'm not advocating getting rid of this helpful device; rather, we should replace it. We are a nation of entrepreneurs, in need of jobs, who are smart enough to produce a piece of packaging that, after use, simply biodegrades.
Statistics abound about how long certain products take to decompose in our environment: aluminum cans take up to 500 years; a plastic jug takes 1 million years, and Styrofoam ... well, Styrofoam lasts forever. I shudder to think about what in those products is then leaching into the environment.
A number of countries in the European Union have adopted a system, called the Green Dot system, that goes like this: manufacturers have to pay for a "green dot" on products. The more packaging for a product, the more expensive the fee for the green dot. Clearly, it's less expensive to use less packaging. (Do we really need to buy small electronics in those big, hard-to-open plastic containers?) Germany claims this program has reduced its garbage volume by a million tons a year. I would advocate that we take it a step further: the less biodegradable the product, the more expensive that dot.
I realize that in hard times, putting more burdens on corporations that may pass the costs along to consumers is an unpopular idea. But can we ignore this environmental problem? And couldn't, shouldn't, a new industry boom right now out of the need to transform the manufacturing of packaging into the manufacturing of biodegradable packaging, with the least impact possible? Bring on the clever-minded businessmen, the scientists, the do-gooders! (Some companies already use biodegradable packaging, but their semi-expensive products seem generally relegated to the shelves of high-end stores like Whole Foods, where the masses most certainly don't shop.) Along with creating jobs in this country, we could nicely tell countries that manufacture inexpensive packaging and products -- such as China -- that we aren't interested in products covered in plastic with a lifespan of 500 years, but we'd be happy to import new and improved biodegradables. We need to find a way, in this day and age, to fill the shelves of the dollar stores with products wrapped in harmless packaging.
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The other thing they do in Germany is reuse packaging. If you buy a beer that comes in a glass bottle, you pay a 15 cent deposit on that bottle. When you take it back to the store, they don't just recycle it--they actually send it back to the beer company to use again. The same thing goes for many plastic bottles--they make them out of thicker plastic and when you take them back to the store, they send them back to the soda company to be refilled. I know that many people find this practice a little bit...gross, but when you think about it, it's a lot less disgusting than filling our landfills with unnecessary trash. If you do happen to buy a plastic bottle that isn't reusable, the deposit is 25 cents. No state in the U.S. charges more than 10 (and a euro is worth more than a dollar).
Of course, a reusable tampon applicator might not be the way to go.
There is at least one brand of tampon on the market that uses NO applicator. Of course, the woman has to willing to insert her finger. Upside is she will pretty well be forced to wash her hands afterward, too.
the last statement......so funny i'm lmao and that's a bit of fat.
As long the bottles are sterilized, I don't see how it's any grosser than a restaurant washing and reusing their plates, glasses and cutlery.
This reminds me a dilemma I faced not so long ago. I was looking at the container of a popular brand of organic salad, on it it says "Made of Corn, 100% biodegradable". I debated with my self as to what I should do with this container. I wanted to compost it since it is made of corn, but I live in an apartment so I don't have a compost, I pondered about digging a hole outside or just throwing it outside, but I felt uncomfortable with either one of the options. I looked between the trash and the recycling bin. Where I live, they only recycle #1 and #2 plastics, since this is neither, it won't fit in the recycling bin. I looked then to the trash, which I felt also uncomfortable with since depending on the landfill facility, much of the time the trash is compacted so much that it lacks the water/air/sun light that microorganisms require for biodegradation. So where something can normally degrade in a month or so like newspaper and much of other carbon-based organic goods in an open air, compost-like environment, now would require over 20 years to degrade. This piece of "trash" can essentially sit in a landfill for another 100 years. Ultimately, the container went into the trash, but it left me feeling a sense of uneasiness.
We can look to making packaging more biodegradable, but perhaps in that case, it would be better to flush the tampon applicators down the toilet than to throw it in the trash. There has to be something done so that biodegradable goods are not sitting in a heat trap for hundreds of years.
And as to less-biodegradable the product the more expensive the product, we should take it one step further. Instead of punishing consumers for purchasing coke in a can or milk in PET jug, we should do a "rebate" based pricing. Since it is difficult to say which is "better" a biodegradable milk jug as compared to a recyclable milk jug. We should look to which way is actually going to encourage reduce, reuse, and recycle. Charging someone 50 cents for a #1 PET milk jug may ensure that jug is returned to a recycling facility, whereas purchasing a biodegradable jug may just mean another jug in a landfill that won't degrade for another hundred years. However, if one can ultrafit the landfill so that organic matters can degrade faster, or that composting is a more common/practical practice, than perhaps switching to biodegradable goods will be a more beneficial route.
Just one minor point:
The bulky packaging for small electronic devices is an anti-theft measure: it's a lot harder to walk out of a store with an MP3 player if it's in a shoebox-sized container.
Put it in a giant box that you remove at the register, the giant box can be reused. I'm pretty sure it's the store that cares whether if the item is stolen, not the MP3 manufacturer.
I am old enough to remember when all retail stores kept small items behind the counter and/or locked in display cases. When you purchased it, it was handed to you. No extra packaging needed to be used at all! The "downside" here -- if it is truly a downside -- is that the shops actually had to HIRE some reliable and reasonably intelligent salespersons/clerks. Imagine that! Less waste, more jobs.
[Before you call me an old fuddy-duddy, let me point out that much of "the good old days" weren't good at all. We all breathed much more coal soot, the cars used leaded gas, etc.]
Don’t use the toilet as a trash can!
Toilets are a convenient and quick way to get rid of baby wipes, tampons and plastic applicators or condoms. Out of sight, out of mind. Not so for plumbing and wastewater systems, treatment plants and our environment. Despite what a product package may say nothing should be flushed down the toilet except toilet paper and human waste. And one of the worst culprits for causing problems are TAMPONS. The plastic applicators are called "floatables" and because they are not easily removed at a wastewater treatment plant they are released with the effluent into waterways.
It's time for a country-wide public educational campaign to change people’s attitudes and habits regarding disposing personal items in the trash not down the toilet!
This is a great resource...check it out!
http://www.kingcounty.gov/environment/wtd/Education/ThingsYouCanDo/TalkTrash.aspx
get rid of the tp.....offer a spray head (firm please?). this would eliminate such a mess of paper.