and so this year, i set out to make another change. carefully, i considered the things that i am doing that have a negative impact on the planet (and let's face it, we all probably have a list of areas that could stand some eco-improvement). one of the areas that kept coming to my mind was the amount of plastic that gets put into our recycling bin each week.
recyclable plastic is a step in the right direction, but i believe that eliminating waste is a better solution. (if you think about it each plastic product that gets transformed into something else emits toxic fumes into the air through melting and transportation, each container requires an obscene amount of water to allow the transformation process to take place, each piece of plastic uses a great deal of energy in the melting process... the list goes on.) and so for me, i thought i'd evaluate the bin and see what the source of most of this plastic waste was.
it was shocking. the most frequent offenders in the bin were cardboard tp tubes (and the like) and cleaning product containers. well, what's a girl to do?
not much i can do about the amount of tp we are using, so i decided to leave that one alone.
but the cleaning stuff bugged me- there were laundry detergent containers, surface cleaning bottles, shampoo containers, windex... the list goes on. now we certainly don't go through each cleaning product bottle a week, but each week it seemed like there were at least 3-6 bottles that fell into this category. and so i got to work and i began to look for ways to cut down on this amount of waste.
my journey brought me to the book store, which led me to a book, which led me to shaklee. i'll tell you more about that later, but today i'm going to focus on the waste component that shaklee is committed to.
you see, shaklee sells a cleaning product (organic basic h) that is delivered in its concentrated form. they do this because they believe that you are in fact smart enough to add the water. brilliant. so for around $12 you get 16 oz. of concentrated solution. that solution mixed with water will make 5,824 bottles of window cleaner.
stop for a minute and think about that. that's a lot of waste eliminated (and for 12 bucks a lot of pocketbook savings to boot).
shaklee also sells laundry detergent. my little bottle of shaklee superconcentrated laundry detergent (32 oz. bottle) equals 32 loads of laundry. compare that to my bottle of cheer (40 oz.) that equals 25 loads... the math is unbelievable!
and that is just the tip of the iceberg. shaklee has been green for 50 years, long before green was hip or trendy. in fact, it is the founding principle that the company was built upon- living in harmony with nature.
love it.
and so for me, this is my change for the year. i'm switching to shaklee. by switching to shaklee i am eliminating 100 lbs. of packaging waste from entering the local landfill, eliminating 248 lbs. of greenhouse gasses, eliminating my contribution of phosphates to the water system, and in return i get a non-toxic clean. pretty cool.
what about you? have you thought about a personal eco-goal? i'd love to hear about it. in fact, i'd argue that if you share your goal, you'll be much more likely to stick with your goal. and in the sharing you might also inspire someone else to make the same change.
i believe that by reading through other people's ideas, we might even see how easy some of these changes can be. it might even spur some of us into taking on more than one change! i'm up for the challenge.
what are you waiting for? post a comment and let me know what YOU are doing.
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