Author: Firinn Taisdeal

Americans discard 550 million plastic shampoo bottles every year. In a decade, that’s 5.5 billion plastic shampoo bottles. Each plastic bottle requires fossil fuels for its raw materials, more fossil fuels for its manufacturing, and even more fossil fuels to needlessly ship what is mostly water, the bulk of the liquid shampoo. The bottles are rarely, if ever recycled. The plastic bottles end up either in a landfill, as plastic waste on land, or as plastic waste in the ocean.

None of this waste and damage and pollution is necessary, when shampoo bars in zero-waste packaging are available.

For the most part, a shampoo bar consists of the same ingredients or similar ingredients as liquid shampoo, but with the water removed. The bars are hard like soap, and you use them just as you would bars of soap in the shower, but for your hair.

A vast number of different types of shampoo bars are now available, from a large number of companies. These are not just “hippy” companies either, unless you consider corporate giants such as Unilever and Procter and Gamble to be hippies. Just get on Amazon and enter a search for “shampoo bar,” and you’ll see what I mean. You will probably find the sheer range of products bewildering, so the rest of this article is intended as a guide for your own process of selecting a product.

I can personally vouch for the effectiveness and convenience of shampoo bars, having used several different kinds. Toward the end of this article, I will offer some specific recommendations.

Four factors to note immediately:

1. The shampoo bars are highly concentrated. Even a tiny amount applied to a section of your hair, when rubbed in, will quickly bloom into a full head of lather. It’s a bit of a challenge to use only as little as necessary. Also, when the bar is wet much more material comes off easily, so because you normally apply more shampoo for the first wash and less for the second, you have get used to making extra sure you don’t apply too much for the second wash.
2. Not all of the products are in zero-waste packaging. Many of them are not. I encourage you to shop only for those products packaged only in a simple thin cardboard box, or even just wrapped in paper. Anything else is wasteful.
3. Some products are offered in an aluminum container with a screw-on top. If you buy these repeatedly it’s wasteful, but it does make sense to buy one of these, and then use the container again and again for holding the shampoo bar for travel.
4. This is a developing market, prices vary widely, and economies of scale have not yet kicked in. It’s important to look at price per ounce for each product. There are high quality products available at relatively low prices, as well as low quality products available at high prices. Shop carefully, and read the reviews.

The first product I tried was Anihana Lavender and Rosemary, which comes in a simple thin cardboard box that can go directly into paper recycling. I found this to be a high quality product that was easy and pleasant to use, and smells very good. One of these bars will provide about 80 applications, according to the manufacturer. I bought it for $9.99 on Amazon, so that’s about 13 cents per wash. This is definitely more expensive than most liquid shampoo, but as previously mentioned economies of scale have not yet kicked in, and this particular bar is not the least expensive available.

Another product I can recommend is an aloe vera bar from Soap Factory. This shampoo bar smells great, is very hard, and so lasts a long time.

J.R. Liggett’s has been making shampoo bars for more than thirty years, and always with all natural ingredients and zero-waste packaging. I can strongly recommend the Ligget’s sample pack of travel size shampoo bars.

Give any of these a try, and I’m sure you will like them.

On issues of sustainability, many people have the attitude that responsibility for solving the issues of climate change, ocean acidification, pollution, ecological damage, species extinction as well as other issues lies exclusively with government and corporations. I do not share this view.

Of course legislation, government policy and responsible corporate governance are necessary and will always be necessary, yet we also all bear responsibility, personal responsibility, for our choices and actions that either make these problems worse, or contribute to solutions. I have chosen to concentrate on personal choices that contribute to solutions, and to do so comprehensively, because I have a moral responsibility to do so.

This means carefully considering every area of sustainability that applies to personal choices: overall use of energy and resources, source of electricity, type of heating, modes of transportation, sources of food, land use and land care practices, water use, beneficial versus harmful products, amount and type of packaging of products, and more. We all have a moral responsibility to consider these matters, and to make responsible choices.

Below is a less than complete list of the changes my partner and I have made toward ways of life which, if adopted by more people, would represent progress toward solutions to the major problems listed above.

Changes We’ve Made Toward Sustainability

1. We switched over to getting all of our electricity from a solar farm, so now all of our electricity comes from solar, without our having to install panels on our house and with no financial outlay.
2. Since we drive electric cars (one is a hybrid, but we use it in pure electric mode almost exclusively), and now get all of our electricity from solar, nearly all of our driving does not produce CO2 emissions, even indirectly.
3. We bought an induction stove, because induction stoves are so efficient, and also because we wanted to stop using our gas stove in order to reduce our CO2 emissions. We bought a stove that heats one pot, for only about $50 online. It’s totally great, like magic every time; the ferrous cookware gets hot, but the stove itself does not. We do most of our cooking with the induction stove now, partly because it’s fun to use.
4. We bought an air fryer, because an air fryer uses half the electricity of other forms of cooking with electricity. An air fryer also provides the qualities of fried food, but without the use of oils that when heated and combined with food generate chemicals harmful to health. Food cooked in an air fryer is crispy without any of the problems or mess involved in the use of oils.
5. I’ve been testing various personal care products in order to reduce my use of plastic: refillable deodorant, refillable floss, shampoo bars instead of liquid shampoo in plastic bottles, other products. The results have been very informative, and I am using what I’ve learned to write articles for Eco Home Living.
6. I read “Plastic: An Autobiography,” an amazing work that includes the history of chemistry, the history of human conflict in the 20th century, the damage done to ecological systems by plastic, the damage to human communities near plastic manufacturing, all combined with the author’s background of growing up in Los Alamos during the development of the H-bomb, in which styrofoam was a key design element. Yes that’s true, and was a state secret for a long time.
7. I went “Plastic Neutral” through a service that employs people in poor coastal communities to recover plastic along coastlines and then couples the plastic recovery with local repurposing and recycling operations. The average American is responsible for the production of 22 pounds of plastic per month. I now pay $8 per month to at least ensure that the equivalent amount of plastic is recovered and does not end up in the ocean. The service is from by Humankind through Plastic Bank, and is called “plastic offsets.”
8. We will be converting part of our lawn to a wildflower pollinator meadow this spring, planting 16 native species of wildflowers. When all the flowers bloom in the spring there should be lots of bees and other insects buzzing all over our meadow. We hope to turn this into a neighborhood attraction, to be enjoyed by all the people who take walks on our lane during the warm seasons.
9. We will be doubling the size of our garden, to 8′ x 16′, in part in order to cut down on the size of our monoculture lawn, but also to promote organic growing locally, and to reduce transportation and reduce packaging of vegetables.
10. We had a very successful giveaway of vegetable seedlings in the neighborhood last year, and are planning on expanding this effort in 2023, for the reasons cited just above of supporting organic agriculture, and reducing transportation and packaging of vegetables.
11. We cancelled our mosquito spray service in favor of leaving a tub of water by the house with a mosquito dunk in it. This seems to be effective, and sure beats spraying a biocide all over our property. We may add a few more small tubs with dunks when the warm season returns.
12. We bought a bat house that can accommodate up to 50 bats, and mounted it on the back of our shed. We hope to have some furry flying residents this spring, who will munch any remaining mosquitoes in the area.
13. We cancelled the mosquito spray service also because we wanted to try to eliminate ticks on our property by applying soil nematodes instead. We ordered the soil nematodes through the mail, and used a hose sprayer attachment to apply them, mostly under and around the bushes and other plants on the property. This seems to have worked very well. We didn’t see any ticks at all during tick season.
14. We bought a bidet for each bathroom, so that we will never have to buy toilet paper again. A bidet is truly superior to the TP method.
15. I’ve gotten to dislike gas powered lawn mowers for their noise pollution and emissions. I wanted an alternative, so I searched carefully for a modern manual lawn mower, and finally found a wonderful mower by Fiskars, known for their scissors. The mower is so easy to use, like walking up a very slight incline. I use it to mow the entire lawn, and barely break a sweat. Honestly, I wish it gave me more of a workout, but I love it.
16. Gas powered leaf blowers are horrible: noisy, stinky, polluting. I bought a small corded electric leaf blower by Black + Decker, and am very happy with it. It’s very quiet, but powerful. Yes, it still uses electricity, but since our electricity comes from a solar farm, it produces no CO2 emissions even indirectly.
17. In order to further reduce my use of plastic, I made the following changes:
    • Switched from toothpaste in a plastic tube to tooth brushing tablets packaged in a small cardboard container.
    • Switched from anti-perspirant in hard plastic unrecyclable applicators to refillable deodorant packaged in a small paper tube.
    • Signed up to receive a stainless steel toothbrush handle with replaceable biodegradable elastomer brush heads.
    • Figured out a way to reload a standard dental floss dispenser with floss refills packaged in thin cardboard.
    • In order to avoid buying plastic bottles, I bought a sparkling water maker with refillable CO2 canisters.
18. I’ve been volunteering for Farming Falmouth, which is an effort toward expanding local growing of food on a community basis. Falmouth government purchased a tract of farm land, and now volunteers take care of the land. Farming Falmouth planted a large apple orchard, and I participated in the labour of applying cardboard sheet mulch as well as wood chip mulch in the entire orchard in November. Additional work involves weeding in the orchard, planting garlic, putting seaweed on the pawpaws and managing the large amounts of compost.
19. I teamed up with the founder of LitterPic, based in Wells, Maine, to improve their web site and their service, and also in efforts such as suppling LitterPic-branded safety vests for those participating in litter cleanups.
20. I do regular litter patrol locally, and have a list of areas in Pocasset I intend to clean up, such as the path behind the Corner Cafe, a section of Shore Rd. between the new park and the overpass above the train tracks, and the area behind the Country Market.

I encourage you to adopt any changes you believe would contribute to solutions to the serious problems of climate change, ocean acidification, pollution, ecological damage and species extinction. We all have a responsibility to do so.

Thank you.

With all the discussion recently of a proposed “circular economy,” in which everything supposedly is recycled again and again, it’s easy to forget the value of truly durable products. It’s also easy to forget that no such “circular economy” actually exists yet and that such an economy, even if it is ever developed to any significant extent, is still a long way off.

Therefore it is even more important to choose durability over claims of recyclability for certain kinds of products. For instance, many products made of plastic will simply will never be recycled. It may be theoretically possible to fully or partially recycle the materials, but the likelihood that this will actually happen approaches zero for most such products, and this is not likely to change any time time soon.

Toothbrushes as an Example

Three billion plastic toothbrushes are discarded each year. Nearly all of them are made in such a way that it would be impossible to recycle the materials from which they are made because different types of plastic are combined with each other such that they cannot be separated and the bristles, typically of nylon, also cannot be conveniently separated. In short, these three billion toothbrushes will never be recycled, but will end up either in a landfill, or as plastic waste on land, in waterways or in the ocean.

Bamboo Toothbrushes Are a Bad Idea

In response to the plague of plastic all over the planet, many “throwaway” products have appeared, products with claims of biodegradability. The claim is that the product, even if discarded at random, will disintegrate harmlessly into the environment.

One such product that has become popular recently is toothbrushes made of bamboo. What exactly is the supposed advantage of such products? That you can toss them in the trash after their short life and they will be transported to a landfill and not do any damage in the landfill?

Three billion bamboo toothbrushes per year would be only marginally better than three billion unrecyclable plastic toothbrushes. Also, the bristles in these bamboo toothbrushes are still made of nylon, in microplastic form. Some of the toothbrushes use nylon-4, which supposedly biodegrades, but is still a microplastic that will cause problems in the environment until it does so, if it ever does so.

There are three additional problems with bamboo toothbrushes. First, that’s a lot of bamboo that has to be grown, harvested and processed every year. Second, adding even more organic material to a landfill is a bad idea. Third, when the bamboo degrades it gives off CO2 and methane, which is also a net negative.

A Permanent Toothbrush

Soon on the market will be a much better choice: a permanent toothbrush with a stainless steel handle, and replaceable bristles made of biodegradable elastomer. The stainless steel handle, which constitutes most of the mass of the toothbrush, will last forever. Multiple generations of human beings could use that one stainless steel handle. The head containing the bristles is a single small piece that is biodegradable. You could just put it in the compost, and in a few years it would be gone.

This design had a highly successful campaign on Kickstarter, and is about to be launched commercially.

Buy Dollar Wise, Not Penny Foolish

One issue that nearly always emerges when considering truly durable products is that a durable product is initially more expensive, but typically far less expensive in the long term. A cheap plastic toothbrush costs only about $.60, and will be used for about three months. That means $2.40 per year. If you buy only the cheapest plastic toothbrushes, in ten years you will have spent only $24. But you will have thrown away 40 plastic toothbrushes. If you brush your teeth for 70 years with plastic, it costs you at least $168, and you throw away 280 plastic toothbrushes, which at best end up in a landfill.

A typical cheap bamboo toothbrush costs about $.75, so in ten years you would have spent $30. In 70 years, you would have spent $210, and sent 280 pieces of bamboo to the landfill, along with hundreds of thousands of nylon bristles.

By contrast, the stainless steel handle of the permanent toothbrush costs $18, but will last much longer than an entire lifetime. Yes, you will have to buy refills for the heads (price yet to be determined), but over the long term, you save money on the stainless steel handle, and you will have thrown away exactly nothing, sent nothing to the landfill, and no toothbrush of yours will ever end up as waste, either on land or in the ocean.

You could even include your stainless steel toothbrush handle in your will, to be passed down from generation to generation.

Toothbrushes are still only a minor example of why we should be buying for durability. We should all be applying the same principles of intelligent, responsible purchasing to cookware, clothing, furniture and more.

This week we finally got an induction stove, and it is absolutely great. It provides impressively rapid heating, unsurpassed control of temperature, and is much more energy efficient than standard stoves.

Diferent from Gas or Electric Stoves

The way it works is completely different than a traditional gas or electric stove. It’s called an “induction” stove because it induces an oscillating magnetic field in ferrous cookware. The oscillating magnetic field creates resistance in the metal cookware, heating the cookware directly. No heat needs to be transferred to the cookware, because the cookware itself heats up.

It’s amazing how quickly a pot of water comes to a boil, if you use one of the stronger power settings. There are 10 power settings, and an option to set the desired temperature instead, also with 10 possible settings. This means you get the combination of rapid heating and fine, accurate temperature control.

Because an induction stove is so efficient, you will save on your electric or gas bill. The stove we got was only $49.95 and is sturdily built, with no moving parts. It will last a very long time, certainly much longer than it will take to offset its purchase price in energy savings. For your reference, the model we got is a Duxtop 1800W Portable Induction Cooktop Countertop Burner, Gold 8100MC/BT-180G3.

Ferrous Cookware is a Requirement

One limitation is that you can only use cookware that contains iron in some form. You cannot use cookware that is exclusively glass, ceramic or aluminum. If you try, the stove will immediately complain, and not turn on. The best way to test whether a piece of cookware can be used is to see whether a magnet is attracted to it. If yes, then go ahead.

Cookware designed specifically for use on an induction stove is also available. This type of cookware offers further advantages in energy efficiency and cooking convenience, because the cookware has a ferrous bottom but aluminum sides, which means the food is heated from the bottom, and no energy is wasted in heating the sides.

A small fan comes on when you begin using the stove, because the glass surface of the stove gets hot from contact with the cookware. The fan stays on even when you turn the burner off, until the glass top surface has cooled down. If you still hear the fan going, don’t touch the burner surface.

Induction Stoves Are Safer

An induction stove is much safer than either a gas stove or an electric stove, and certainly much safer than either camping stove or a hot plate, because there is no fire hazard. With an induction stove there is no flame, the glass surface heats only minimally, and the cookware never even approaches ignition temperature.

We absolutely love this induction stove, so much that we are now planning to completely discontinue use of our large gas stove. We just don’t need it any more, but we’re not going to get rid of it, because it makes a handy if huge and heavy stand for the induction stove. All we did was place a glass trivet under the induction stove, and then place them both on top of our gas stove. This works perfectly.

I would strongly recommend this type of stove. You’ll save electricity and therefore save money, and cooking will become more convenient.

The Larger Purpose In All Of This

One major reason we got this stove is that we have the personal goal of making sure that our home is not an emitter of CO2 in any way. Discontinuing our use of natural gas from our stove is only one step along this journey. We also plan on replacing our gas furnace with electric heating, and replacing our gas-powered on-demand water heaters with electric versions. We already drive two electric cars, and are planning on replacing our roof with solar tiles in order to generate all of our own electricity from non-CO2 sources.

It’s easy to make absolutely perfect yogurt at home in large quantities while saving money and preventing waste. The yogurt we make at home is superior to commercial yogurt, is absolutely delicious, and is simple and easy to make. We also avoid nearly all of the plastic containers of commercial yogurt. I make a half gallon of yogurt every week, and it costs me only slightly more than a half gallon of milk.

Because we are making our own yogurt, we also have much more control over the choice of the milk used. Each time we make yogurt, we save about $1.80, and avoid the use of two large 32 oz. plastic containers. We do use an InstantPot computerized cooker for the process, but we strongly recommend the InstantPot because it has high energy efficiency, and can be used to conveniently and rapidly make rice, stew, soup, oatmeal, chili and many other dishes. Therefore we will not include the cost of the InstantPot in our cost calculations.

Less Than Three Minutes of Your Time Required

The process is not inconvenient or time consuming in any way. It takes less than two minutes to prepare the yogurt for incubation, and then another minute or so to pour it once it’s done into a large container for storage in the fridge. Incubation time is ten hours, with no supervision or tending necessary. The InstantPot will let you know when the yogurt is done.

The Quality Of The Yogurt

The yogurt we make is of exquisite quality. It is smooth and creamy, does not separate, and is thick but pourable. We find all these qualities to be absolutely ideal. To consistently produce absolutely ideal yogurt did take a bit of experimenting with both different kinds of milk, and different kinds of yogurt starter. Some of our first attempts produced yogurt that separated, so that every time we wanted to serve yogurt we had to stir it first, which is annoying, and also yogurt that did not taste as good as the perfect yogurt we now make every week.

You may have to experiment with types of milk and types of starter, but we know you can’t go wrong with organic homogenized pasteurized milk and Chobani Greek yogurt starter.

Summary Of The Process

Buy a half gallon of milk of your choice. We use organic grass-fed pasteurized and homogenized milk from Maple Hill Farms, and usually buy through Stop & Shop here in Cape Cod.

Buy a small container of yogurt of your choice to use as starter. We use a 5.3 ounce container of Chobani Greek yogurt, and use less than half of that small container as the starter.

Pour the half gallon of milk into the stainless steel pot of the InstantPot.

Add about a tablespoon of the yogurt starter.

Use a whisk to blend the starter into the milk.

Put the pot back in the InstantPot, and select the “yogurt” setting.

Ten hours later, transfer the yogurt to a container of your choice to keep in your fridge.

We use a half gallon glass jar for keeping the yogurt in the fridge because we prefer to minimize contact with plastic for all of our food and want to minimize our use of plastic in general.

Saving Money

You will always save money making yogurt this way, but how much you save per batch depends on the choice of milk you use, to a small degree on the type of starter you use, and also on what type of yogurt you use as a comparison. Here is our calculation of savings for our choices:

Half Gallon Maple Hill organic grass fed whole milk: $4.99

Chobani 5.3 ounce Greek starter: $1.59

Each batch of yogurt therefore costs us $4.99 + $.80 (1/2 of the small container of starter): $5.79

Compare this to buying two 32 oz. containers of organic yogurt, Stonyfield brand:

$3.50 x 2 = $7.00

Savings: $7.00 – $5.79 = $1.80

If you make a half gallon of yogurt per week, as we do, that’s 52 x $1.80 = $93.60 per year. In ten years you would save $930.

Avoiding Plastic

With each batch of a half gallon of yogurt we make, we avoid buying two 32 oz. plastic containers of commercial yogurt. This savings of resources is offset by buying milk in a cardboard half gallon container, and a small plastic 8 oz. container for the yogurt starter. Because of this offset, a rough estimate (though it’s difficult to compare savings between cardboard and plastic) is about 1.5 32 oz. plastic containers per half gallon batch of yogurt.

Savings for one year: 52 x 1.5 = 78 32 oz plastic containers avoid

Savings for ten years: 780 32 oz plastic containers avoided

If 1,000 people do this for ten years: 780,000 32 oz. plastic containers avoided

If 1 million people do this for ten years: 780 million 32 oz. plastic containers avoided