50 Million Tons of Thermoplastic Resin Later...

'How Bad For The Environment Can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle Be?' 30 Million People Wonder

January 19, 2010 | Issue 46•03

A local resident discards a plastic bottle—just as he has done his whole life—with no perceivable effect on the environment.

WASHINGTON—Wishing to dispose of the empty plastic container, and failing to spot a recycling bin nearby, an estimated 30 million Americans asked themselves Monday how bad throwing away a single bottle of water could really be.

"It's fine, it's fine," thought Maine native Sheila Hodge, echoing the exact sentiments of Chicago-area resident Phillip Ragowski, recent Florida transplant Margaret Lowery, and Kansas City business owner Brian McMillan, as they tossed the polyethylene terephthalate object into an awaiting trash can. "It's just one bottle. And I'm usually pretty good about this sort of thing."

"Not a big deal," continued roughly one-tenth of the nation's population.

According to the inner monologue of millions upon millions of citizens, while not necessarily ideal, throwing away one empty bottle probably wouldn't make that much of a difference, and could even be forgiven, considering how long they had been carrying it around with them, the time that could be saved by just tossing it out right here, and the fact that they had bicycled to work once last July.

In addition, pretty much the entire states of Missouri and New Mexico calmly reassured themselves Monday that they definitely knew better than to do something like this, but admitted that hey, nobody is perfect, and at least they weren't still using those horrible aerosol cans, or just throwing garbage directly on the ground.

All agreed that disposing of what would eventually amount to 50 tons of thermoplastic polymer resin wasn't the end of the world.

"It's not like I don't care, because I do, and most of the time I don't even buy bottled water," thought Missouri school teacher Heather Delamere, the 450,000th caring and progressive individual to have done so that morning, and the 850,000th to have purchased the environmentally damaging vessel due to being thirsty, in a huge rush, and away from home. "It's really not worth beating myself up over."

"What's one little bottle in the grand scheme of things, you know?" added each and every single one of them.

Monday's plastic-bottle-related dilemma wasn't the only environmental quandary facing millions of citizens across the country. An estimated 20 million men and women wondered how wasteful leaving a single lightbulb on all night really was, while more than 40 million Americans asked themselves if anyone would actually notice if they just turned up the heat a few degrees instead of walking all the way downstairs and getting another blanket.

Likewise, had they not been so tired, and busy, and stressed, citizens making up the equivalent of three major metropolitan areas told reporters that they probably wouldn't have driven their minivans down to the corner store.

"Relax," thousands upon thousands of Americans quietly whispered to themselves as they tossed two articles of clothing into an empty washing machine and turned it on. "What are you so worried about?"

Running Hot and Cold

NOTE: At the moment of writing, the little bugger is 100% breastfed, which has a certain mitigating effect on the condition and odor of the waste product.

I did a lot of reading about what would get diapers clean. I read about rinsing in the toilet, I read about a hot rinse in the washer, then a full cycle of hot wash, hot rinse, I read some stuff about vinegar and Borax and other hippie-type cleaning agents.

Here's what I did.

First, I washed with hot, rinsed with hot. I used 7th Generation laundry soap. I read complaints somewhere about residue and reduced absorption, but I haven't seen it. I added 1 cup of vinegar to the wash cycle, and another cup into the fabric softener cup. I read about adding vinegar in the rinse to remove odors, and I was doing that with regular laundry anyway.

I thought what a drag to have to go down there and figure out when it was rinsing, so I studied the mechanism in the softener dispenser and discovered that it only came out during spin cycles, which would work fine.

I also added about 1/4 of Borax to the wash. Borax is bauxite. It's mined. It's not man-made, so the hippies dig it, but it's still not good to eat or put in your eye. Bauxite undergoes a mild reaction in water and generates some H2O2 - hydrogen peroxide - which is a very mild bleaching agent. Bauxite also has a tendency to leave behind some alkaloids in the fabric, which cause rash pretty effectively.

The bauxite, hot water combo makes your diapers pretty stain free - sans chlorine.

I wash the diapers on the "Small" load selection to conserve water.

I dried the diapers on hot. They came out fluffy and soft.

Then I read the British LCA on cloth "nappies" and found that the best way to lower the carbon footprint of your diapers was to hang them dry. Now I do that. They're a little crunchy, but nobody minds.

Then I started washing the diapers in hot and rinsing them in cold. I cut down on the amount of Borax to ease the rash. They still came out really clean and smelled pretty good.

I also tried reducing the wash load to "Extra Small" - but that wasn't enough rinse water to get the soap out of the diapers. Back to "Small."

I then tried cold wash cold rinse. Got rid of the Borax (still with the rash). Now the diapers have noticeably dark stains and a very subtle, but not unpleasant, odor when they come out of the wash. By the time they're dry, the odor is gone and they smell pretty much like nothing.

I don't rinse them at all before putting them in the wash. This may change when we introduce some solids. I'm looking forward to better weather, when the UV rays can bleach and odor-eliminate for me. I hear that works quite well.