Ready, Set, Reduce

Lately, I’ve been trying to streamline my liquids that I used to take care of my hair and skin for several reasons. One, I am tired of buying shampoo, conditioner, etc over and over again just to have to recycle the container and then worry about whether or not it will actually get recycled. Two, I want things in my house to look more visually appealing and I know that I can accomplish that by purchasing re-fillable containers to put product in. Finally, I can’t see why I should continue purchasing the same cleansers and moisturizers I currently use just to refill a bottle that looks more appealing to the eye. NOT TO MENTION, I’m sick and tired of buying the same lotions over and over again only to find out that the companies are not using quality ingredients, I’m not getting properly cleaned/moisturized, or their values simply no longer align with my own. Overpriced skincare is overrated and simply ridiculous. I’m looking *directly* at you Bath & Body Works...you gross bigoted, pandering, greedy, child-slave-having CEO motherfuckers. I’ll never buy another L Brands product in my life. I hope they go and die and eventually we live in a world without BBW or Victoria’s Secret and that women feel freed from their toxic existence. To some people that’s gonna sound radical, but if you’re still shopping there then I hope you stop. Nothing good comes out of that company, not even “their” fragrances. They have a long history of stealing those fragrances from smaller companies anyway. Shitheads. Anyway, here’s a link for anyone in LA trying to cut back on their goo-hoarding and simultaneously cut back on their plastic packaging. 

https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2020-03-06/zero-waste-refill-stations-in-los-angeles-southern-california

My favorite internet dentist did this side-by-side comparison of what it looks like when you use regular toothpaste vs these tablets, and I can honestly tell you that I was not impressed with the tablets performance. The purple is where there’s plaque left after brushing. Not ideal, guys. Not ideal at all. (Photo is not mine. Please give all the credit to Summerlea Dental. Link below.)

Link for the dentist who did such amazing work in my life without ever even SEEING my teeth: https://summerleadental.com/clinicinfo/lush-toothy-tabs-dentist-review/

After that LENGHTY process, I was a bit discouraged to say the least. Initially, I was ecstatic about this “packaging free” option for something I use more than once a day, BUT THEN I found out that not all of them are even environmentally conscious with their packaging. Some, you can only order online so they are shipped with various materials that are either non-recyclable or are more than what I would be contributing with ONE bottle of toothpaste/3mos, and therefore moot. OR They were insanely expensive. As I went through the process of comparing the prices of all these options, rating them on usefulness, and throwing out the ones that didn’t even bother to worry about packaging, I realized, “maybe I should see how much I usually spend on toothpaste.” Obviously. So, I checked. I currently buy the Colgate Optic White, and I don’t always buy from the same place because I shop around based on the lowest price. I found a two pack of the 5oz tubes for less than $8.00 on Amazon. The average person uses one tube of toothpaste in about 3 months. Using that math, I calculated that we probably go through a tube every 1.5 months because I share it with my partner. So here comes my next round of issues with these tablets. They come in either 30 or 90 tablets for most companies and a few others have a 120 tablet option. LET ME TELL YOU how much the LEAST expensive bottle of 120 tablets are: $7.00. If you didn’t do the math, I did. For my partner and I, that’s 30 days worth of tooth brushing. For DOUBLE the price, I would be able to brush my teeth for HALF of the time that I could for 2 tubes of regular toothpaste. Tbh, folks, I can see why no one chooses these options with these kinds of obstacles.

I’ve never been one to let anything, as my Nana would say, “whip me,” so, of course I went in search of other options. Nana didn’t raise a quitter. So, I landed on some environmentally conscious brands. One of which, they sell at Target, so they had already piqued my interest. ‘Hello,’ seems like a great option up front, but when you look deeper into it, they use a lot of packaging that damages our environment. These folks have OPTIONS though. You’ve got charcoal flavors that I’ve never even HEARD of and it’s all very unique and modern. They even have BOTH fluoride and non-fluoride options, but I wasn’t impressed with their lack of effort in the low impact packaging. It’s a good second place to be sure, but Nana also didn’t raise a loser. SO, I finally happened upon Tom’s Naturals and much to my delight, they have since early 2019 been rolling out a recyclable toothpaste packaging option. AND LOW AND BEHOLD, what is that before my eyes? A whitening, charcoal, chemical-free, environmentally conscious TOOTHPASTE. You guys, I think I won.

Link for Tom’s & My fav Dentist’s review of Lush which was ALL it took to convince me. You’d be surprised what I’d be willing to do for science. *wink wink*

TL/DR: I have no idea what I’m doing. You shouldn’t listen to me, but I need a place to organize my thoughts on this project.

MAIN THEME:

For this blog, my goals are simply this: REDUCE.

I think that a lot of people feel really good about recycling. AND YOU SHOULD RECYCLE, don’t get me wrong, BUT *and this is important* there are more that one step to helping our environment and it’s multitude of issues. In fact, there are THREE. The first one is, you guessed it—Reduce. In my opinion, being the first arrow in the cycle, the first listed, the first named, etc, that makes it IMPORTANT. So without further ado, here’s how last year I started becoming a more aware person.

It all started with a nature documentary. I watched, I cried, I awoke. I was very upset by the prospect of a mother whale’s milk poisoning her baby because of the environment she lives in. It’s fucking tragic and I think that point is beyond being debatable. So in 2019, I made myself a promise that I would try to do my part. Up until that day, I need you to understand, that I felt as if my decisions could not POSSIBLY matter in this issue. It felt stupid that little ‘ol me in this GIANT world giving up water bottles would even matter at all. How could one person really make a difference? I know, what a cliched and boring question, but I still to this day feel like there are some things that are just too big for me to try and solve, fix, think about, prophesize, etc. To be frank, I just felt like it was all not enough, like, no matter WHAT I did it couldn’t POSSIBLY make a difference. I think a lot of this stems from my issues in math and numbers and how they make me feel inferior, but I digress, with a little help from a very math-positive friend, I felt an impact. Small though it may be, an impact nonetheless. So I am going to share some statistics with you that inspired me. So, before you get overwhelmed, I’m gonna start big and then break it down into what made me go, “oh.”

Ok, so scientists think that somewhere around 8 MILLION metric tons of plastic are dumped into the ocean every year. For reference on what this looks like here is what a 6.8 metric tons look like:

SO. Imagine about 1.1 million more of those swimming around in the ocean. What I’m getting at is it’s A LOT, and that’s uninspiring. So of that 8M number, I needed to know how much of it my ONE water bottle really impacted. So....

Americans drink 10 BILLION gallons of plastic bottles every year, and in 2016, less than HALF were collected for recycling. What’s half of 10B...? Idek. I don’t think that number really matters to most people, and for most of my life it certainly didn’t matter to me because that is FAR too much for me to fathom. Most people can’t even fathom 10B of ANYTHING.

I’ll be transparent here, none of these numbers meant a damn thing to me. Watching that baby whale die...that’s what did me in, y’all. I’m not heartless even though I like to pretend to be. So, what made me feel like I was doing something important? Doing it. I just started reducing. It started really really small. I stopped buying water bottles, I got a water filter, and I filled up my cups, and I was like, “SURELY that is enough and I can stop there.” And that’s when it happened. It all started crowding in around me. I started to see how much plastic I was using just to EXIST. Suddenly I realized how MANY things were made of plastic. You guys....it’s like EVERYTHING. Do you remember that time when you were a kid and someone was like, “haha check the labels on your things and see if it says, ‘Made in China,’ lol it’s like China owns us lol so funny.” It was like that. I was like suddenly I realized plastic owned me and I had been living with my eyes closed the whole time. So I started frantically changing like everything I did, and running around looking for new solutions to the things I used every day. It was insanity. It still is. For 2020, I kept my same resolution as last year. It’s reduce. Surprising, right? Anyway, how could I not I still have all this plastic to get rid of, and no, the earth probably doesn’t notice that I don’t use waterbottles anymore, but I sure fucking do. I notice when other people use them, too. I notice when people don’t recycle. I notice when I’m not in LA, and there’s no recycling bin in sight and I am forced to either throw away a recyclable OR litter...it makes me cringe. I now have a PHYSICAL reaction to the inability to decide how I impact my own environment, and for anyone that knows me AT ALL, taking away my right to options is just not a thing you should do to gain my favor.

I want for this to be something that someone reads and thinks about. Just thinking about it was enough for me, and maybe it will be enough for someone else, too. I also want to help be a resource for those people who are just starting out like I am and need help. I am well versed in research as a historian, and sometimes I do it for fun, but other times I do it because I need to know who is profiting from my funding, or what is the best no-waste toothpaste option because my partner gets mouth ulcers from the chemicals in our toothpaste and I’ve suddenly realized that the toothpaste we use is far more impactful than just the risk the chemicals are posing to our bodies. So, without further ado, please enjoy this place as an informational safe space where I can research without judgement, answer questions to the best of my ability, let people know what works or doesn’t work in my life, and to ultimately have my own impact here on tumblr.

—♻️REduces✌️—

Here’s a link from oceanconservancy.org where I found some of this information.