Usually on this blog I write in Swedish, but today it is tme for some english excersices. Bear with me, this is a comment to a youtube video that Sorted / FridgeCam posted on.
What is the deal?
Sorted posted a video on plastic things used in kitchens, but who now has been replaced by witty companies tapping in on the plastic panic that spreads over the world
Am I giving it away? Is it to obvious that I think the solution is to consume less, not change your consuming habits from plastic to something else
I will post the same video, but set so it start with each new ”thing” that you need to displace your plastic consumption needs.
First off Plastic Gloves
It is made out of suger canes, corn and starch and perseived to be more nature friendly. Aparantly, they are ”compostable” as well
As James puts it – you shouldn´t use plastic gloves. It is proven over and over that plastic gloves end up beeing way more unhygenic than cooking bare hands.
If you have a skin condition, a cut or work in an environment where you don´t do anything else but the same repetetive motions (ie the food industry like packing food or so) then you might use a plastic glove.
Also the fact that they are made out of ”natural” ingridient like vegetables doesnt matter at all. Do you really think that gloves as cheap as that is made out of ecological produce? That the produce has been farmed in a small scale where nothing like fertilizers (synthetic that is) or pesticides have been used?
Compostable you say? How on eart can fungi, worms, bacterias work their way through a plastic glove? Yes, it might be biodegradable over time – but how long?
Secondly here is the straw made out of apples
Compostable/biodegradeable. Single use! Edible. Lots of apples beeing juiced.
Do you know what is biggest difference that you could make? Teaching people how to drink from a glass.
As they so delightly put it, why do you even use a straw? This is a non-solution to a stupid consumer habit.
Stop sucking, start sipping. It is as esy as that! That is because straws are single use. Consume and toss away is not a solution – it is an erratic behaviour.
Total waste in so many ways
The straws supposedly are biodegradable and compostable. Sure, they probably are, but how long does it take? If that many apples are juiced, you should look at a large scale use for them. Compost/natural fertelizer for farmers och just to recycle them as heat. But wasting resources turning them into something that you don’t even need?
Third, the vegan bread wrap
”It is perfect for wrapping bread keeping it fresh.” Made out of ”organic” cotton. Pine resin. Sumak wax. Sunflower wax. Rice brand wax? And ”other” things. And vegan friendly.
Lets start with my dear old ”friend” organic cotton.
In attempting to drawing a comparison between the benefits of organic cotton versus conventional, Textile Exchange used a life cycle assessment (LCA) produced by Cotton Inc. in 2014 as a baseline and set out to create a similar LCA for organic cotton. The findings revealed that organic cotton has the potential for environmental savings in several areas: it’s 46 percent less harmful to global warming, there’s 70 percent less acidification of land and water, the potential for soil erosion drops 26 percent, surface and groundwater use falls 91 percent and demand for energy could go down by as much as 62 percent.
Sourcing Journal June 2017
Better than what? Some examples. Taking a T-shirt conventional cotton would use 2,168 gallons of water compared to 186 for organic. To make a pair of jeans, conventional cotton would take 9,910 gallons of water compared to 932 with organic (a savings of 8,978 gallons).
Saving thousands of gallons of water might sound good. But you are still wasting 186 gallon for one [SIC!] t-shirt or a whopping 932 gallons for a pair of jeans.
So you are wasting valuable water for your vegan eco cotton bread wrap. At a price of £5 it is extremely expensive. Next time you are wrapping your bread, use and old t-shirt or a towel. That will keep the bread fresh without the need for more consumption.
Reuse, refuce, reduce, recycle. If you save your worn out t-shirt and use it as bread wrap you will have wasted 0 gallons of water. You haven´t contributed to brainless consumption in plastic panic and you haven´t added to the transports and mnufcturing of a product nobody needs.
The guess that it was bees wax was actually the clever thing to do. Take an old linen or cotton towel (a thin one works good). Search your neighbourhood for a bee keeper. They will have bees wax that you can get, or rather buy for £5. That way you support your local bee keeper as well.
Easy peasy and you can even give a clot to your local bee farmer as a well appreciated gift.
The last contender: The Scrubber
The Scrubber – a coconut scrubber with a wooden handle and a metal structure.
Anyone involved in the recykling of materials can tell you that a product made out of one material is easy to recycle. A product with integrated materials is usually really hard to recycle.
With properties like wood, metal and coconut fibers, how do you recycle it? Is it wood, natural fibers or metal? This will end up in a land fill some where because there is nothing else to do with it. If you use a metal scrubber that can be used indefinetly and if it would waer out you recycle it as maerial.
You need to reduce, refuse and recycle, not consume more. That is the sustainable solution.
You Sorted guys – this is not a Sorted bashing. This is a reaction to all the unbiased plastic panicing when we rather should be smart consumers. Love your channel, please keep on going!