Episode 9 - Random House Plastics Be Gone!

Welcome to 1000 Ways Green! The show where we are going to give busy people like you easy ways to help save the planet for our future generations, and try to save you money along the way.

This week’s episode is going to wrap up our initial series on how to remove plastic from your life. There will likely be more episodes about plastic removal at some point in the future considering how much plastic we humans use. Leaf me a comment about how soon you’d like to see those come back. Onto this week’s three things:

Mint Green level: If you have long hair, switch to buying Terra (hair) Ties. This one is a win for two reasons. First, they don’t have the plastic band inside of them which is why I’m talking about them here. Second, they are tougher than standard hair ties. When my wife was using standard hair ties either she would snap them or our cats would pull on them and rip them apart. In 18 months, I have yet to see one break.

Shamrock Green level: Swap out your laundry room supplies for ones that don’t require a plastic container or create garbage each time. I’ve got two options for you for detergent, a detergent sheet or a metal canister detergent that you get refills for that lasts a long freaking time. There are also some Dryer Sheets & Dryer Balls you can use to replace your garbage creating dryer sheets and save you money over time. Plus many of these dryer balls are pretty darn cute. Who doesn’t want little penguins helping to dry their laundry for them?

Forest green level: This one is both the easiest and the hardest because it is never ending. Did you know that all the mail you get that has that thin plastic “window” on it can’t be recycled? Even when it says recyclable on it? The thin plastic gums up the machines in the recycling centers and causes them to break down and need to be fixed, therefore slowing down and hurting the efficiency of every center. So what can you do?

1. Cut or rip that thin plastic out of each piece of mail you get and throw that part away so the rest of the paper mail is actually recyclable, since without it, paper can be fully recycled seven times!

2. Find a way to contact the companies that are sending out mail like that and ask them to do two things: First, start printing peoples names on the outside of the envelopes rather than the paper on the inside so they don’t need the plastic windows. Second, ask them to make the default for their mail as electronic rather than paper based.