plastic – Say No To Food Waste

Big eyes, small hands and a cute little mouth. A baby around a dinner table can be a very adorable sight. Especially, when they want to be like the ‘adults’ and drink their juice from a cup as well. With so many sippy cups that come in different shapes and sizes, it’s easy to make your little growing bundle of joy feel like part of the entire family as they sit in their high chair, clutching a small cup with their little fingers, and feeling all grown up.

But while the adults are most likely eating out of porcelain plates, using their steel silverware and drinking from class cups, the child is sipping from a toxic ‘plastic’ cup. So we ask ourselves, why would the industry fool parents of precious little children into buying products filled with chemical toxins that infest the body of the young one?

Answer – 80,000 chemicals are currently on the market, and most of them have not been tested for safety. In fact, most chemicals that enter the market are considered ‘safe’ until proven otherwise. This is what happened with “bisphenol A (BPA),” a chemical that is commonly added to plastic baby bottles, “which mimics the hormone estrogen and has been linked to a long list of serious health problems.” (Mother Jones)

And after people heard about the dangers of BPA, the market was quick to find a solution and replace the chemical with something ‘safer’, when in fact, all that happened was the market replaced one dangerous chemical with another, which hasn’t been tested for safety and thus couldn’t be labeled as ‘dangerous’. One such replacement is, triton, which is in fact, one of the most estrogenic compounds in plastic bottles, such as KOR.

So, while the chemical and plastic industry continue to sell products filled with chemicals that haven’t been proven safe, and conduct their own studies that are biased, and designed to yield the results the industry wants, the consumer is left with the following options.

OPTIONS FOR CONSUMERS:
1. Get rid of ALL plastic materials at home, especially bottles, silverware, tupperware, and saran wrap.
2. Read this NPR article that reviewed a study by Dr. George D. Bittner, who found that “Most Plastic Products Release Estrogenic Chemicals: A Potential Health Problem That Can Be Solved.”
3. Ensure that your bottles and other plastic materials are stored away from UV lights and heat, as warm temperatures leads to leeching of the toxic chemicals into the juice and food inside the containers.
4. Don’t wash these products in the dishwasher and don’t boil anything in them. It’s also best not to put them in the microwave.
5. Do your own research and don’t believe everything the industry is selling you!

Take home message. Your safety and health is YOUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY. It is a lot of work, but thanks to caring bloggers and honest researches, this vital information can be found online. EPA and FDA do not regulate most produce, and only ban chemicals at the request of the agency.

Here is a video report by Democracy Now that spoke with the author of the article.

I will keep you posted with any updates! Good luck and eat safe!

With warmest wishes,
Hokuma

We have already heard a thousand of times that plastic is bad, is toxic, is not biodegradable, or is already inside of our bodies. And yes, we cannot live without it, because it is a cheap material and many things that surround us are made of it. Can you imagine me typing this text on wooden or metal keys? Yes you can, but I would be considered as a hipster or a rich kid that doesn’t know what to do with his money. In this entry I would like to present one of the few good ways of using plastic.

I decided to write this text because I have already encountered a couple of articles talking about the same idea, which can be of a help in the fighting with food waste, or at least in its reduction. Last year, two authors Stephen Aldridge and Laurel Miller, wrote a guide about the new trends in the packaging industry called “Why Shrink-Wrap a Cucumber?: The Complete Guide to Enviromental Packaging”. So why is it good to use a plastic foil on vegetables? As the authors claim “an unwrapped cucumber will lose 3.5% of its weight after just three days of sitting out. Shrink-wrapping slows evaporation, keeping the cucumber fresh longer: A wrapped cucumber loses a mere 1.5% of its weight over two weeks.” I, as probably many others, was shocked to hear that. Each time I saw fruits, vegetables or bread wrapped in some artificial plastic foil I was trying to avoid it taking the next aisle in the supermarket.

I don’t need to tell you how much of a deal breaker it can be, as far as reducing food waste is concerned, or the fact that it will save many other natural resources in the process. Last year, Tesco made a test (The results couldn’t be found) trying out new packaging technology on fresh produce. The Guardian claims, “Tesco estimates the new packaging could lead to a potential saving of 1.6m packs of tomatoes and 350,000 packs of avocados every year. If successful, it could be rolled out across 80% of the varieties of tomato it sells.” Another supermarket that is trying to be “eco-friendly is Marks & Spencer. “Trials in M&S stores showed a minimum wastage saving of 4% – which during the peak strawberry season would equate to 40,000 packs, or about 800,000 strawberries.”

Of course plastic is bad, but part of this is because we use it in excess. Maybe if we would use it for good reasons, and than reuse it or recycle, then it would become a very “green” or “sustainable” material. There is also a possibility of using bio-plastic, which is another good solution for many of today’s plastic related problems. There is a Polish saying, “it is not as bad as they write it” (Nie taki zły jak go piszą). Maybe this saying is very applicable to the case of plastic.

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posted by Piotr Wielezynski