How to save the planet, one toothbrush at a time

Plastic is evil. There's simply no other way to say it. Yet we all continue to consume more and more of it. 

Every year, humans produce another 400 million metric tons of plastic, and none of it is going anywhere — except, of course, for the microplastics finding their way into nearly every organ in our bodies, increasing our risk of strokes and heart attacks. 

Like a lot of people, I recycled plastics religiously for many years. So I was more than a little peeved when I learned that plastics recycling is mostly bullshit – a lie concocted by the same petrochemical companies that have gotten insanely rich from producing the stuff. [1] 

A September 2020 NPR report puts it pretty bluntly:

NPR and PBS Frontline spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn't work — that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled — all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic. 

Instead of finding ways to make recycling more efficient, Big Plastic spent $50 million a year on ads like this one. Source: NPR. 

Personally, I have greatly reduced my personal consumption of plastic – I haven't bought plastic bags in over a year, I bring my own to the supermarket, I try to buy goods in paper containers when available, etc – but I'm still far from kicking the plastic habit entirely. Partly because it's kind of unavoidable, particularly with product packaging. You don't generally get a choice what that widget you just bought comes wrapped inside. This is a source of endless frustration for me. 

Waiting for the government to do anything about this, let alone private industry (ha!), is a bit like waiting for the rapture. Lots of promises, but Jesus has yet to enter the building. If we want to save the planet while it's still worth saving, we need to take matters into our own hands. Here are a few ways to do it. 

The tooth and nothing but

I recently got the Last Toothbrush I'll Ever Own. It was a gift from faithful reader and occasional theater impresario Firinn Taisdeal, and it's a stainless steel work of art. It came out of a Kickstarter project, and is now manufactured by a company called Singular Care. 

The handle has a satisfying heft to it. If Liam Neeson had one of these in the Taken movies, he'd definitely use it as a weapon. But there's still room for improvement. The replaceable bristles (which are still made from plastic) are less than ideal. It's a little like brushing one's teeth with the wrong end of a plastic toothbrush. Still, it's a start, and I'm confident it will get better over time.

In addition to promoting sustainable tooth care products, Firinn has created a Sustainable Choices checklist that serves up 150 things you can do to save the planet, along with the advantages, disadvantages, and difficulty levels of each. [2]

The list ranges from things like "Buy organic food" and "Use a bidet" to "Question every claim and every norm of the currently prevailing system of destructive consumption." [3] You can sort by how much impact each choice can make, customize the list based on your own particulars, filter it by the categories you care most about, and so on.

It's an impressive document. I don't think it's possible to do all of them (though if you did, I'd nominate you for a Nobel Prize). I think I manage to do roughly 19 of them, some of the time. 

My challenge to you: Open this Sustainable Choices in a browser on your phone and take it with you wherever you go, then try to adopt a new habit every week or two. 

Bamboo you

One of the things I've done that's surprisingly not on Firinn's list is to stop buying paper towels and toilet paper made from trees. I am now on the bamboo train, courtesy of yet another friend who persuaded me to make the switch. (I also have bamboo sheets – they're surprisingly silky – and bamboo bowls and cutting boards). 

The advantage to bamboo is that it grows like, well, bamboo – prodigiously and in every direction. According to Environment America, bamboo trees can grow up to three feet per day and are ready for harvesting within three years. They also suck down carbon as they grow, and are about as sustainable a source of lumber as you can get. Yes, bamboo PT and TP are a little more expensive, and they don't feel exactly like their leafy cousins, but they're close enough.

Fun fact: Every day, 27,000 trees are cut down just so you can wipe your butt. So stop squeezing the Charmin, Mr Whipple. 

See me, see you, seaweed

My friend (and editor in a previous lifetime) Molly Wood [4] writes a Substack newsletter (sigh) and an Apple Podcast about climate change called Everybody in the Pool. What's great about this particular newspodstackletter is that she's focused on practical solutions to the climate crisis, and the folks who are creating them. 

Recently she interviewed Julia Marsh, CEO and co-founder of Sway, which uses the natural polymers contained within seaweed to manufacture sustainable alternatives to plastic. One of the advantages to seaweed is that we don't have to plant or water it – God, in her infinite wisdom, has already taken care of that – so it doesn't require additional energy or resources to farm it. It grows like a weed (hence the name), 20X faster than other plastic alternatives like corn. Thirty-five million metric tons of it are already being harvested each year for use in cosmetics and food, so there's an industry in place dedicated to cultivating it. The stuff rapidly decomposes after use.

And, most importantly, it can be used to replace single-use plastic packaging, which is the bane of my existence [5]. 

Key to Sway's approach is that it can be manufactured using  the same facilities that now churn out petroleum-based plastics.  And because most of the plastic we use seems to end up in the ocean, it generates a circular lifecycle that is deeply satisfying.

Now Sway's challenge is getting industries (especially food and fashion) to adopt them. 

The plastics tide is turning

The good news? Big Plastic's day of reckoning is coming. 

Anthony Schiavo, senior director and principal analyst for Lux Research, says plastics manufacturers are about to experience serious blowback from consumers who are mad as hell about the diet of microplastics they've been fed for decades, and they're not going to take it any more.

Lux Research's customers are the same evil motherfuckers chemical and fossil fuels companies that caused this mess in the first place, and Schiavo is telling them, watch out. He writes : 

"[T]here’s quite a high degree of consensus [among consumers]... that microplastics are a significant and omnipresent health risk, both to human health as well as broader environmental health. This is significant because consumers are way ahead of both policymakers and chemical companies in a way that they’re not on issues like recycled plastic or decarbonization, which have relatively low consumer salience....

[C]ompanies need to be proactive about consumer sentiment by identifying and formulating out the worst sources of microplastics and engaging directly with microplastic cleanup efforts and technology before the backlash really starts." 

Big Plastic’s lie about recycling is on par with the tobacco industry's propaganda campaign denying the harms of cigarettes or Big Pharma knowingly concealing the highly addictive nature of opioid painkillers. 

In an ideal world, all of the people responsible for this mess would be airdropped onto that island of plastic trash floating in the South Pacific and left to fend for themselves. Until that happy day, it's time to start the backlash now. 

Let this Earth Day be Fuck Big Plastics Day. Stop buying or using the products that make these people rich. Voting with your wallet is the only way to get their attention.

What other things can we all do to save what’s left of the planet? Offer up your suggestions in the comments or email me: CrankyOldDan AT gmail DOT com.

[1] All I want is 15 minutes in a locked room with the CEOs of these companies and a sackful of manure. Is that too much to ask?  

[2] In an appropriate twist for The Tynan Files, he generated most of the advantages/disadvantages text accompanying each suggestion using ChatGPT. 

[3] My favorite might be Choice No. 65: Accept that there is no "planet B."

[4] If you ever listened to NPR's Marketplace, you've heard Molly. She was their primary tech correspondent and occasional host for nearly seven years.

[5] I have a few other banes in my existence; most of them have names that rhyme with grump or felon.