Cleaning products.
Photo from: familiesagainsttoxicproducts.org
We, who like to think we are environmentally aware, have been happily (well, not happily - uninterestedly, perhaps) buying various cleaning products over the years thinking they are invaluable and necessary to the household chores. I have always, or certainly in the last few years, bought items said to be non-harming to land, water, flora and fauna - and that are also housed in 'recyclable' plastic bottles.
But why do we feel we need all this stuff? Adverts presumably, and that our parents used such things - actually, I don't recall my mother using anything at all other than a bit of washing up liquid, but then she was rather Quentin Crisp about cleaning - after five years the dust doesn't get any worse, I think he was quoted on saying.
Some years back a group of friends in our region got together and started growing, collecting and drying herbs to make into a general house-hold cleaning product; mixed with vinegar - a easily found by-product of the wine industry here - culminating in an excellent product called VAM. At the local bio store you can buy an initial bottle, then keep going back for the re-fills. It's brilliant for floors, surfaces, everything, especially used in conjunction with bicarb of soda - and you get an exciting little fizzing chemical reaction for added excitement.
Maybe it's not 'spring meadow' (chemical)-perfumed or not quite as mega-grime removing as some of the more caustic products, but how deep-cleaned do we all really need to be? Yes, maybe in a hospital, but probably not at home.
I once saw a program about anti-bacterial sprays where the crew went around an average house and checked out what was lurking in places that people usually get scared about - sinks, loos, et al, and nothing harmful was discovered. The program's maker also suggested we invite a lot of our own modern-day allergies through being over zealous with spays, air-fresheners and wipes.
Plastic
Do we really need (thick) plastic cat-head crunchies containers - small cardboard box?
Violently-coloured, huge plastic drums containing body-building . . . stuff including calf's whey
Where to start? We all know from the zillions of films circulating about seas full of discarded plastic, and rubbish dumps as high as office blocks that we and our planet have a massive problem, but if we could all make small changes, the message to manufacturers would gradually, or possibly, rapidly, seep through.
Here's a picture of Mark's home-made ketchup (mainly tinned tomatoes, onions and tom paste) housed in the LAST ketchup bottle we will buy. And my attempt at home-made deodorant (lemon juice, bicarb and err, can't remember now) - perfectly effective on a day-to-day basis, although I might occasionally resort to something stronger for scary bureaucratic, bank loan situations, etc.
