Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. And for God’s Sake, Step Away From the Plastic!

I’ve been trying to reduce the amount of plastic in my life. Sound pretty easy, right? Not so much. Until I started trying to make purchases that did not include plastic I had absolutely no idea just how pervasive it has become. (At first I wrote the word “invasive” instead of pervasive, maybe I should have left it?). Seriously, try to purchase toothpaste, aspirin, makeup, a pen, even shampoo in anything but a plastic container.

Some stuff is easy – body soap? Pretty easy, there are some very nice body bars sold in a box. Some, like “Pure and Natural” even imbed flower seeds in the box, so that you can bury it in your garden and get flowers as a “free gift”! Trash bags? Not too hard, those come in some really nice corn-based, compostable forms (check out reusablebags.com). Even dishwasher soap comes in a box.

But, the liquid dish soap one would use to wash dishes by hand? Yeah, try to find that sucker in anything except plastic. Cleaning supplies? Plastic. Makeup? Plastic. Shampoo? Plastic…

But wait! Today I made a wonderful discovery. A company called Phytosolba (sp?) makes an all-natural shampoo in ….. a METAL container! Won’t break in your shower, and the container isn’t made from plastic. The drawback? It is made in France. So shipping it here probably used up enough fossil fuels to make up for the lack of plastic. All though, if you look at the labels, most of the shampoos sold here are made in New York, so for us Californians, there is still a fair amount of shipping involved.

Anyhow. Suffice it to say, one plastic problem solved (sort of); many more to go. I’ll keep trying.

Now, where is that darn recipe for all-purpose cleanser… I’ll make it myself and store it in a glass bottle…