plastic

6 Easy Ways to Stop Wasting Plastic

Rachel Slifka — Fri, 06 Jul 2018 08:00:09 +0000

We all know plastic is bad for the environment, but exactly how terrible is it? According to the organization Plastic Oceans, the world population is producing nearly 300 million tons of plastic every year. Half of which is for single use. And to make matters worse, every year more than 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into the ocean.

Ouch.

Even if you're not ready to ban plastic entirely, there are many easy life changes you can make to help save our planet. They might seem like small steps, but they go a long way in helping to reduce plastic waste and protecting sea life. Here are six easy ways to cut back on plastic. (See also: 8 Things We Keep Buying That Are Killing the Planet)

1. Ban plastic bags

Many cities are banning plastic bags entirely, and for good reason. According to the EPA, Americans use over 380 billion plastic bags and wraps each year. Most of these bags are used one time and then promptly thrown out, creating an incredible amount of waste.

Fortunately, there are plenty of eco-friendly alternatives. You can bring your own reusable, canvas tote bags to the grocery store. Most grocery stores sell canvas bags for just a dollar or two, and you can use them for years before they need to be replaced. (See also: 10 Things You Already Own That Can Be Turned Into a Tote Bag)

2. Shop secondhand

Items such as toys, electronics, and even clothes require enormous amounts of plastic to package and distribute. Often, these items are used for a few years and then no longer needed and improperly disposed of. You can reduce plastic waste by purchasing many of these items secondhand.

To find the best deals on these items, scour stores such as Goodwill, eBay, and local consignment shops. You can also shop online using digital thrift store apps like Poshmark, Tradesy, ThredUp, OfferUp, and even Facebook Marketplace. By purchasing used items, you're helping the environment, and you can save some money as well. (See also: 8 Things You Should Always Buy Used)

3. Rethink your groceries

Everyone needs to buy groceries, but food often requires a lot of plastic packaging. Particularly, single-serve and pre-cut foods, such as individual yogurts, cheeses, fruit, veggies, and other snacks, use more packaging than if you bought these same ingredients in bulk and divided them up into snack-size portions yourself.

You can combat the excessive packaging dilemma by purchasing unpackaged produce, buying in bulk, and looking for plastic packaging alternatives, such as glass jars. (See also: 10 Things You Didn't Know You Could Buy in Bulk)

4. Transition to reusable products

The age of convenience creates a lot of extra waste. Think about how many to-go coffee cups, plastic straws, and disposable cutlery are thrown out at the end of each week. In fact, according to the National Park Service, over 500 million straws are used each day. That's enough to fill 125 school buses each day!

You can help to lessen the blow by switching to reusable products. For instance, you can switch to a reusable water bottle instead of drinking individual bottles of water. Stainless steel, silicone, and glass straws are becoming quite trendy — or you could skip the straw entirely.

For coffee, purchase a travel mug. Not only does a reusable mug help the environment, but it can keep your coffee warmer for longer. As an additional bonus, many coffee shops will give you a small discount if you bring in your own reusable mug. (See also: The 5 Best Reusable Straws)

5. Switch your toothpaste

Who knew your toothpaste could contain plastic? Disturbingly enough, microbeads are simply small pieces of plastic, and they're commonly found in toothpaste, body wash, and facial cleansers.

Every time you use a product containing microbeads, plastic is being washed down the drain. Fortunately, the Food and Drug Administration created new regulations that prohibit the use of microbeads in such products. Some products are already banned under the FDA's timeline, but certain products are not set to be pulled from the market entirely until 2019.

To be safe, check each product to ensure it does not contain microbeads. If you have some old cosmetics lying around, don't forget to check those, too.

6. Recycle

No matter how conscious you are at avoiding plastic, no one is perfect. Sometimes, it is simply unavoidable. That being said, the worst thing you can do is simply throw out your plastic. By recycling, you can prevent plastic from ending up in landfills, where they can take hundreds of years to decompose.

Every city has different recycling requirements, so look up your city regulations before recycling. Sites like Recycle By City, or your town's website, guide you through city requirements, so you can ensure you are recycling properly. (See also: 18 Clever Ways to Reuse Your Plastic Shopping Bags)

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This article is from Rachel Slifka of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

8 Fun Facts About Credit Cards

Emily Guy Birken — Thu, 24 May 2018 09:00:36 +0000

Receiving your credit card statement each month may be the opposite of fun, but credit cards themselves are actually a pretty fascinating subject. The little plastic cards that we all rely on have a long, storied history, and there is a lot that most people simply don't know about their primary payment choice.

Here are some surprising facts about credit cards that might just change the way you look at your wallet.

1. Credit card numbers can be validated via a checksum formula

Valid credit card numbers follow a formula known as the Luhn algorithm. With this algorithm, starting from the right, you double every second digit. (For instance, 1111 would become 2121). You then add together all of the resulting digits. If the number you come up with is divisible by 10, then the credit card number is valid. If it's not divisible by 10, it's an invalid card number.

2. The first digit of your credit card tells what industry issued the card

You may have noticed that all of your cards from the same provider start with the same number. That isn't an accident. The first digit of a credit card indicates what industry issued the card: 1 and 2 indicate an airline card; 3 is for the travel and entertainment industry; 4 and 5 are for banking institutions; 6 is for merchandising and banking; 7 is for gas cards; 8 is for telecommunications; and 9 is for assignments by national standards bodies. American Express account numbers start with a 3, Visa accounts with a 4, Mastercard accounts with a 5, and Discover accounts with a 6.

3. Your card expires but your account doesn't

An expiration serves two purposes. First, a physical credit card can only last for about three-to-four years' worth of swiping and dipping. An expiration date provides your issuer with a date on which to send you a new card before the old one falls apart. Second, the expiration offers a small measure of identity theft protection for cardholders, since it is another piece of information that you would only have if you had the card in your possession.

Most credit card companies send you a new card before your current one expires. If for some reason they don't and you try to use a card that's past its expiration date, it will be declined. But your account should still be valid — you just need to ask your card issuer for a new card.

4. Farming communities used "credit cards" in the 19th century

Long before credit cards were accepted everywhere as payment, farmers would rely on credit extended by local general stores. In the 19th and early 20th century, farmers would need to use credit at their local store for at least part of the year because their income was seasonal. In areas with a large number of farmers, stores started issuing credit cards (initially made of cardboard) to help identify which customers were associated with which accounts.

5. Credit cards were "invented" by several different people

John Briggs created the first bank-issued credit card in 1946. Briggs was a banker with Flatbush National Bank of New York, and he invented the "Charge-It" card, which was technically a charge card since the balance had to be paid in full each month. However, Charge-It was only available for customers of Briggs's bank, and the card could only be used for local purchases.

In 1950, Frank McNamara, head of Hamilton Credit Corporation, created the Diners Club card — the first credit card that could be used in more than one store. McNamara came up with the idea for such a card after a business meal at a major New York restaurant. He had changed his suit before the dinner, and forgotten his wallet in his other jacket. After that embarrassing incident, it occurred to McNamara that it would be useful to have a noncash method of paying for meals. The Diners Club card was born. When it was first introduced, the card was issued to fewer than 200 people and was only accepted at 27 restaurants in New York. However, within a year, more than 20,000 people were using it.

6. Single women could not get credit cards until 1974

Until the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, women could not get a credit card without a husband as a co-signer. That meant single women and married women who wished to establish credit separate from their spouses were denied credit cards. The 1974 law made it illegal for creditors to discriminate against applicants on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, or marital status.

7. Laid end-to-end, all the credit cards on earth would circle the globe 3.5 times

As of 2013, there were over 1.635 billion credit cards in circulation around the world, according to SuperMoney. If all of those cards were laid end-to-end, they would stretch over 86,981 miles, which would circle the earth three and a half times.

8. There are 10,000 worldwide credit card transactions every second

The American Bankers Association estimated in March of 2009 that there are nearly 10,000 credit card transactions occurring every single second worldwide.

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This article is from Emily Guy Birken of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

15 Things You Can Do With a Credit Card Besides Buy Stuff

Paul Michael — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 09:30:23 +0000

Almost everyone has a credit or debit card. They're just small pieces of plastic that help us pay for things. Or are they? Aside from their obvious use — paying for stuff — credit cards can be incredibly handy in other ways, too. Here are 15 different uses for plastic that may have never even crossed your mind.

1. Open a Door

Okay, we've all seen it in movies and TV shows, but does it work? If you lock yourself out of the house, can you actually open the door with a credit card? Well, yes and no. If the door is on a deadbolt, you're out of luck. But if it's a simple spring latch, you simply push the card between the door and the doorjamb, and wiggle a little. It's a good hack if you ever lock yourself out and only have your wallet on you.

2. Make a Tongue Scraper

They say that bad breath is often caused by the bacteria on your tongue. You can do your best to get rid of it with a toothbrush, or buy an expensive tongue cleaning tool. But why not just grab an old credit card? Wash it thoroughly, then cut it into a shape that will fit nicely on the tongue, making sure not to leave any sharp edges. The flexible plastic is perfect for removing bacteria.

3. Apply Wall Filler and Putty

A good putty knife can set you back $10–$15. You can buy cheap plastic ones for a few bucks, or you can take out an old credit card and use that. It's a good size to handle, the plastic is flexible, and you don't even need to bother cleaning it when you're done.

4. Make Strong Collar Stays

Collar stays go missing quickly. They often fall out in the wash or at the dry cleaners. Or, you remove them yourself before washing, only to misplace them. Well, credit cards are the perfect thickness and size to make several collar stays, and they'll be stronger than the originals. Simply use an existing collar stay as a template to cut around, or buy yourself a collar stay punch.

5. Scrape Your Icy Windshield

If you live in the kind of climate that is constantly changing (Colorado, for example…sunny one day, snowing the next), you may not always have an ice scraper close at hand. But, you'll almost certainly have a credit card. Grab one, and use it to scrape the ice from your windshield, windows, and even mirrors. It's small and flexible, and won't scratch the paint.

6. A Simple Bookmark

Don't dog-ear the pages of your book. Instead, take out an old credit card and use that. The straight edge is also handy for helping you keep your place. Of course, don't use anything other than an expired card, especially if it's a library book and you return it with your card tucked between the pages. You can also cut a V-shape in the card, and it will slip over a page and protrude from the book.

7. Create Luggage Tags

If you travel a lot, you know the importance of a sturdy luggage tag. But they can be expensive, and often go missing. Instead of forking out for replacements, create your own. You'll need an expired credit card, and a couple of business cards. Firmly glue the business cards to the front and back of the credit card, trim the excess, then wrap in some clear packing tape. Now, punch a hole in the top, and attach it to your case. It will last years.

8. Create a Smartphone Stand

In need of a quick phone stand? Take out a pair of scissors and an old credit card, and with a few sly cuts, you can get the job done. Needless to say, they're quick and easy to make, and cost nothing more than an old credit card.

9. Grate Hard Cheese

Yeah, right. Actually, that was my reaction, until a friend of mine did it. It won't work on soft or even medium density cheeses, but the hard Italian cheeses like Parmesan and Romano are perfect for this life hack. Using the side of the credit card with the raised numbers and letters, rub quickly against the cheese. It will come away in small pieces, just as if you were using a cheese grater.

10. Make Guitar Picks

If you play guitar, you will go through guitar picks like a new parent goes through baby wipes. They always seem to get lost, no matter how many you buy. Well, use old credit cards to make your own. You can use a guitar pick to trace the shape, or if you want, splash out on a pick punch. They're cheap, and make life very easy.

11. Label Your Stuff

Your credit cards all have one thing in common — your name. So, instead of throwing out old cards, first cut out the section containing your name. Now, you can affix that to whatever you want, be it a tool, a pen, a phone, or anything else, using some double-sided tape. It will stay put until you peel it off. You could also use glue if you want a more permanent solution.

12. Apply a Screen Protector

If you've ever bought one of those clear plastic screen protectors (and please do if you haven't, they can save you a fortune), you'll notice that they often come with a small plastic applicator. In fact, it's very small, and often inconveniently fiddly. Don't bother using it. Instead, grab your credit card. The strong, flexible plastic removes all the bubbles way more quickly and easily than the standard applicator that comes with the kit.

13. Keep Your Earbuds Organized

How often does it happen to you? It's time to workout and you go to grab the ear buds from the drawer. You spend the next 10 minutes trying to detangle them. Well, a credit card can make this little problem disappear. All it requires is a little skillful cutting and about seven minutes of your time.

14. Open Boxes

No need for a box cutter or sharp knife. Take an expired credit card and sharpen one edge slightly using sandpaper or a nail file. You can keep it handy in a wallet or purse and will always have a slim, handy box opener available. It slices easily through box tape, and isn't as dangerous as a knife.

15. Make a Battery Cover for a Remote

Anyone with kids will be familiar with missing remote control battery covers. Somehow, they pick at it, it falls off, and gets lost. Now, your batteries are held in by rubber bands or pieces of tape, and it does not look pretty. Instead, use an old credit card and fashion a perfect fit.

What clever uses have you devised for your credit cards?

This article is from Paul Michael of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Do plastic baby bottles cause diabetes and heart disease?

Andrea Karim — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:48:52 +0000

Me, I've been a big proponent of doing away with plastics for a while now. I'd like to feel vindicated, but today's issue of USA Today just sort of made me sad. Check out the slide show here.

A study was released today that some scientists believe implicates bisphenol A in the formation of diabetes and heart disease in humans. Results are preliminary, and more studies need to be done. And, of course, the FDA still says that plastics are more or less safe.

"Some scientists say the study — released today to coincide with a Food and Drug Administration meeting— shows that bisphenol A, or BPA, is too dangerous to allow in consumer products, especially those used by babies and pregnant women." USA Today

"Higher BPA exposure, reflected in higher urinaryconcentrations of BPA, may be associated with avoidable morbidityin the community-dwelling adult population. " JAMA

"Two weeks ago, the National Toxicology Program said it has "some concern" that BPA alters development of the brain and prostate gland in children and babies, both before and after birth." USA Today

A number of stores are removing products that contain bisphenol A from their shelves - Toys R Us and Walmart have both been pulling toys and plastic baby bottles since early summer.

The plastic industry is, of course, fighting every attempt to reduce or change the way we use plastic in our everyday lives. From fighting the plastic bag fees that are being instituted in my fair city of Seattle and elsewhere, the American Chemistry Council is doing their darndest to keep a lid on this possibly dangerous substance. To be fair, the Canadian plastics industry is no better.

Of course, I see the value of having plastics in our lives. I certainly wouldn't want to ride my motorcycle wearing a helmet made of tree bark and sheepskin. And it IS difficult to know if studies like this one are truly causal: it's possible that high levels of bisphenol A in humans with diabetes and heart attacks are linked, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the relationship is causal. Perhaps people with heart disease and diabetes eat more prepared (unhealthy) food from plastic packaging, hence the higher levels of the chemicals in their blood.

I don't like fear-mongering, but I'm also aware of an industry's deep-seated need to fight scientific evidence.

In any case, I have been limiting my exposure to products containing bisphenol A as much as I possibly can, and will continue to do so.

Six Wise has some good tips on how to avoid BPA in your life (following list is taken from Six Wise).

If you want to avoid products with BPA, keep in mind the following:

Plastic that contains BPA carries the #7 recycling symbol.
Most clear plastic baby bottles and child cups are made of BPA-containing plastic.
Dental sealant may leach BPA; this is being debated. You may want to avoid dental sealants on your children's baby teeth.

You can minimize your BPA exposure by:

Replacing plastic food and drink containers and utensils with glass, ceramic or metal varieties.
Purchasing glass baby bottles.
Using baby bottles and sippy cups made of polyethylene plastic (#1, #2, #4 recycling symbols) or polypropylene (#5) (these are usually colored, not clear, and should still not be heated).
Not using canned foods or foods wrapped in plastic.
Not letting children put plastic toys in their mouths.
Being careful with BPA-containing plastics, if you choose to use them. This means not exposing them to heat (microwave, dishwasher) or harsh detergents (bleach, etc.) and not letting food or beverages sit in the containers for too long.

This article is from Andrea Karim of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Does a plastic cork make for a lousy wine?

Andrea Karim — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 07:36:46 +0000

I remember the first time my mother opened a bottle of wine that featured a plastic cork. She gasped audibly; the family gathered in the kitchen, where we took turns poking at this odd, pliable plastic cylinder on the kitchen counter. We all knew, instinctively, that this was an INFERIOR bottle of wine, because it was corked with plastic and not... you know, cork. How unromantic! How untraditional! How... eh, pour me another glass, will you?

Since that fateful day, I've opened my fair share (OK, more than my fair share) of wine bottles that are corked with plastic. Or, more recently, with screw tops! Alright, I admit it - I've had wine from a box. The shame!

The truth is, despite the fact that I have a very strong sense of smell, I haven't noticed a difference between naturally and synthetically corked wine (there are some wine experts, or sommeliers, who claim that they can taste the difference between a wine that is sealed with a syntehtic cork and one sealed with a natural cork). My inability to differentiate might be because I'm sort of a lush, or maybe because there really ISN'T a big difference, performance-wise, between traditional corks and plastic ones. Or maybe it's because the synthetic corks are inert.

Why the switch to plastic corks/screwtops?

Nobody has a single, definite answer as to why certain wineries have moved away from natural corks - that is, corks made from the bark of the cork oak tree, which grows mostly in Portugal and Spain in lovely, arid forests. Some people have claimed that there is a shortage of cork available for wine production, as new wine regions are popping up all over the world (twenty years ago, if you had mentioned that you had a great Australian/South African/Peruvian red with dinner, you would have been involuntarily committed). Cork is also increasingly being used in other applications as well, such as flooring.

So, the demand for cork has increased. Even desirable wines are turning to "unnatural" corking methods. According to CorkFacts.com, there is enough cork growing in Portugal to last the wine-making world another 100 years. This fact is often quoted, probably in an attempt to sound reassuring, but to me, 100 years sounds like a very short amount of time.

The most oft-recited reason for switching to synthetic corkage is that natural cork allows roughly 10% of corked bottles to go bad (also known as "cork taint", or simply "corked"). A fungus that is found in cork bark may be the culprit for the loss of many hundreds of thousands of bottles annually. Synthetic corkage doesn't carry the same risk of fungal infection, so wines can not only last longer, but you don't lose a huge portion of your vintage to mold. So, from a vintner's standpoint, plastic corks are a very frugal item, indeed.

Still undecided is if plastic corks allow for adequate aging of red wines.

So, plastic cork means it's a cheap wine, then?

Not necessarily. I've opened a few expensive bottles of wine that have featured plastic corks. When I started doing my cork research, I was hoping that synthetic corks were the key to finding the most frugal, sensible wine available. It turns out that you can't judge a wine by its corkage.

There are a plenty of people who likely feel that synthetic corks take the artistry out of wine-making, or that synthetic corks are indicative of a cheap, mass-produced wine, but as it turns out, you can't really tell which wines are going to feature synthetic corks until you actually open them.

My absolute favorite wine in the whole world uses natural cork. Hell, Charles Shaw uses natural cork. So, there's a mental barrier for me to jump over when I open a bottle of wine with a synthetic cork. The difference is likely purely mental. As Treehugger points out:

"Natural corks have proven themselves over the years but it’s the cultural resonance that extends even to the novice drinkers. This is something that the traditional cork industry has capitalized on and has taken huge strides to fight back. U.S. cork importers have created a rigorous testing system to weed out tainted cork while the Portuguese cork industry has launched an extensive $8 million campaign to commend the natural cork."

Besides, you can't tell what kind of cork is in the bottle when you buy it, since the cork is usually covered by foil or wax. And anyway, I tend to buy bottles based on the label design. Don't laugh - you do it, too.

I'm curious as to how Wise Bread readers feel about this: we're a frugal group, to be sure, but I get the idea that many of our readers value quality and craftsmanship over pure, industrial reliability.

Environmentally, what's the deal?

There are environmentalists who argue that allowing screwtop and synthetic corks to take over the world of wine-making will be detrimental to the cork forests in Portugal, which are home to may rare animals. It's odd to think of cork forests, which are more like orchards than forests, as wild habitats, but in truth, they're probably a combination of the two: a place for wild animals and a working forest. Some activitst posit that the loss of the natural cork industry would mean the loss of many thousands of European jobs, as well.

Besides being decidedly unsexy, plastic corks are... well, they're plastic. Plastic is so great in so many ways, and so terrible in many other ways. Tree Hugger and Wise Geek both proffer that one can recycle plastic corks, although I've never seen any evidence of this in my area. Natural cork is easily composted (or saved for the sake of memory), but plastic corks... I can't figure out what to do with them.

I'm prone to advocating for the natural cork approach, even though the thought of wasted wine due to fungus makes me die a little inside. Cork trees do grow in Portugal and Spain, which are dry Mediterranean climates. Who's to say we can't expand cork production to other ares of the world with similar climates? Parts of the east San Francisco Bay Area and North Africa come to mind almost immediately.

How do Wise Bread readers feel about this issue, if you've given it any thought? Do you care, one way or another, about how your wine is corked? Are you a cork snob? A two-buck-chuck swiller? A boxed-wine kind of wino? Do you feel strongly enough about the issue to boycott a wine based on its corkage. or is it a null issue for you?

Interesting cork facts:

Corks are made from bark that has been stripped from the tree trunk (see above). The tree is not damaged, and can regrow all of its bark every 9 years or so. However, the average cork tree only lives 150 years.
Wine was originally made in casks that were "sealed" with a layer of olive oil to keep the wine from coming into contact with the air.
Natural cork recycling is common in Australia and Europe.
Wine corks are coated with a thin layer of resin or wax to prevent rotting while a wine ages.
Many European beer bottles are sealed with cork. So are some home-brewed soft drinks.
You can buy cork from India, apparently.
Natural cork has a Poisson's ratio of nearly zero. And yes, I knew what Poisson's ratio was before I wrote this. Also, I like Firefly. Why yes, I am single. Why?

Fun facts

This BBC article has a wide range of information about wine corks, with only a hint (OK, a big hint) of anti-environmental bias in favor of the plastic corks. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page to read about great things to do with leftover corks (the first person who can tell me where the line "Why is the cork on the fork?" wins my undying admiration).

This article is from Andrea Karim of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Keep These Things in Your Car; Save Money

Andrea Karim — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 23:04:08 +0000

As I fall deeper and deeper into veggie-eating, plastic-eschewing hippiedom, I thought I'd share some of my ideas for reducing, reusing, or recycling. There's nothing here you haven't heard before, but that doesn't mean it isn't valuable information!

Here are things that I've started keeping in my car to keep me from overspending or wasting.

Pack a lunch that packs a punch

Not only is packing your own lunch a very frugal option, but it can be fun, sassy, and will cause you to waste less. Think about how much you throw away if you get a sandwich, chips, and drink at Subway. Even the cafeteria where I grab work puts half a sandwich in a big styrofoam container, rather than on a paper plate or even a reusable plate. Even if you decide to eat lunch out on the town, having your own containers on hand can help you avoid bringing home paltry leftovers on a stryofoam shell. Keep some reusable plastic containers in your car or at your desk, and use them for leftovers or take-out as necessary.

Lots of people brown-bag it, but if you want a stylish lunch box in which to transport your Spamwich, there are lots and lots and lots to chose from. The Bruce Less lunchbox pictured above can be purchased at Wow Shopper.

Just for kicks, you can use this web page to calculate how much money you can spend or save between dining out and brown-baggin'.

Get a hold of your hunger

Very often, I will find myself driving home, stuck on the freeway, and my blood sugar drops. Or I'm so hungry that I get incredibly cranky. The traffic is bad enough as it is - I don't really need to be hungry on top of it all.

So, I'll pull into the nearest fast food chain and get some fries. Great. That's not a lot of money, but I just spent my calories for the evening.

How to keep from losing your cool to a growling stomach?

Make, bake, and bring. Here are some recipes that I really like to use to create Road Food. They'll hold me over until I get home, satiate my noisy gut, and help me keep from gorging on a fries-and-blizzard combo at Wendy's.

Also consider keeping something really simple in your glove compartment, like dried fruit or nuts, or both. Change them out every week (either eat them, compost them, or let the dog have them).

There is an intial expenditure with these items, and the swankier you get with them, the more the upfront cost. But the cost is usually balanced out very quickly in the savings.

(Photo by MURAT BAYRAL)

This article is from Andrea Karim of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Bottled Water, Bottled Hype Part 1

Andrea Karim — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 22:04:19 +0000

This is the first in a three-part series about bottled water. To read the second installment, click here. To read the third installment, click here.

Have you ever stopped to think about just how incredibly odd it is to buy bottled water? I'm only recently coming to understand just how ludicrous the whole thing is.

Really, think about it:

America has some of the best civil infrastructure in the world. Most Americans have clean drinking water piped directly into their sinks. Yet, we persist in buying the bottled stuff.
Sales of bottled water topped $35 billion in 2003, and have gone up steadily since.
Bottled water costs consumers of the Starbucks Ethos brand roughly $9.85 per gallon, just a tad more than gasoline. Oh, wait - yes, that's triple the cost of gasoline. Now, not everyone buys Ethos-brand bottled water, and you can get a purified gallon of water at the supermarket for roughly a dollar. That's still a dollar too much.

Time for a Metaphor

Let's imagine that there's a guy who lives in France, we'll call him Pepe, who generates really green electricity from his windfarm. He can ship the power in the form of HUGE batteries, from France. You can then go the store, buy a huge battery, hook the battery up to your house, and voila!- you are able to use it to power your lights. Great! When you are finished, you just throw the battery away and buy another one at the store. Sure, you could just use the electricity that is wired into your home, but green power is better, right?

Well, when we buy bottled water, especially bottled water from overseas (like Fiji), that's exactly what we are doing. We're deciding against something that we have immediate access to, something that pours freely into our sinks at the twist of a handle. But instead, many of us prefer to purchase water. Water, which is sort of ubiquitous, now arrives in plastic bottles, bottles that are polluting to create and polluting to get rid of.

Fossil fuels are burned moving the water across the ocean (in what I like to call "an ironic twist"), and then a diesel-burning truck brings the water to your grocery store, which you drive to in your gas-burning car.

Where you buy it. And drink it. And throw away the bottle.

Environmental Impact

The environmental impact that the bottled water craze is having on our planet is staggering:

Bottled water is responsible for an enormous increase in world production of plastic bottles. Surging sales of bottled water coincided with and may help account for a 56 per cent increase in U.S. plastic resin manufacture in the U.S.A. between 1995 and 2001 (from 32 million tons to over 50 million tons annually). Consuming critical supplies of petroleum and natural gas, plastic bottle factories create and release toxic wastes, including benzine, xylene, and oxides of ethylene into the environment.

Drinking bottled water actually increases the price of gasoline, because the manufacturing of the bottles and the transportation of the water simply increases demand for oil. I'm not going to say that if you drink Evian, the terrorists have won, but keep in mind that when you buy bottled water, you're not just consuming bottled water. You're consuming (and paying for) all of the chemicals that went into producing that bottle that the water arrived in, as well as the gas and oil consumed in bringing the water to you.

It's shockingly inefficient. It's also ridiculously bad for our planet:

"About 300 billion pounds of plastic are produced each year, said Charles Moore, founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. That's 1,000 pounds for every American.

"And massive amounts of it are washing into the sea.

"Swirling in the Pacific Ocean is an area of man-made trash the size of Texas. A few years ago Moore towed a fine mesh net like a giant cheesecloth through the area -- dubbed the "great garbage patch." The haul contained six times more plastic than plankton."

Read that full article in the Seattle PI - I guarantee that it will make you think carefully about throwing away plastic. One thing that I didn't know was how plastic is capable of degrading. I had always been told that a plastic bottle now is a plastic bottle 2000 years from now - but plastic does break down into smaller pieces, and it's everywhere.

The trouble is that there's no effective way to remove the plastic pollution, whether it's in chunks or microscopic bits. Researchers say the solution is keeping it out of the water in the first place. And there's good reason to do so: it's on our dinner plates.

This is the first in a three-part series about bottled water. To read the second installment, click here. To read the third installment, click here.

(Photo by shutterbug hottie shrff14)

This article is from Andrea Karim of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Is Plastic Killing Us? The True Cost of Convenience

Andrea Karim — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 23:43:15 +0000

Plastic is really hard to avoid. In fact, it's everywhere. Clothing, mattresses, furniture, carpet - plastic is used to prevent fires as well as food stains.

And now, plastic is in an even more exciting place! Your bloodstream. Can Teflon-coated arteries be far behind?

The recent stories about the return of serious metastisized cancers in public political figures Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow tripped my anxiety switch a bit. Less so than with the impending recession, but enough to get me worried. Almost everyone knows someone who is living with, or has died from, cancer. My own grandfather had colon cancer. Half of my mother's friends appear to be recovering from breast cancer.

It all started with Eve

Recent studies are placing some of the cancer blame on female hormones. Man, women get blamed for everything. But seriously, estrogen just doesn't seem to do anything right. First, we were using it to ease symptoms of menopause in women, then it was found to increase cancer rates. Estrogen released by sewage systems is causing problems with fish populations. And now, it seems, estrogen, or chemicals that mimic estrogen's properties, are causing cancer left and right.

In lab rodents, anyway.

As reported in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, scientists are just now discovering the link between plastics and estrogen. And it's kind of scary.

In studies with mice, researchers have found that adult females exposed to bisphenol A in the womb have irregular estrus cycles and stop cycling earlier than unexposed females. The animals exposed to the chemical had changes in a part of the brain that controls ovulation and cycling, Soto said. Female rats exposed to bisphenol A in the womb developed carcinoma in situ and pre-cancerous changes in their mammary tissue as adults, she said.

Bisphenol A is a compound that was studied in the 1930s for purposed of birth control, so its link to estrogen-like behavior is clear (estrogen is used in birth control pills to prevent pregnancy). The fact that bisphenol A molecules can link together to form a type of plastic is what makes it fascinating. Its potential for industrial use is why it was never actually used for birth control.

Well, just because you're not popping it in your mouth everyday at the same time in the form of a pill, that doesn't mean that you don't have bisphenol floating around in your body.

The chemical is ubiquitous and almost unavoidable.... Most people carry the chemical around in their bodies at low levels — about 1 part per billion in blood, urine and tissues. "That seems like a staggeringly small number until you realize that the natural hormone it's acting like works at levels 10,000 times lower than that...."

Is there a frugal angle here?

Some of you Frugal Freaks are now saying, "Um, Andrea? That is your name, right? Well, I like my Wise Bread posts to be about money and how I can save it. Not about dumb things like health care and cancer and how cancer affects me and the public... and the uninsured... and job performance, and as an extension, taxes and healthcare costs as they apply to the insured... and... OK, Andrea, I get the damn point. Cancer is affecting us, and trickle down economics means that, even if I don't get cancer, it the rates are skyrocketing, it will affect my bottom line somehow."

Excellent, I'm glad you understand. If you like, we can put aside the emotional impact of living and dealing with cancer. If you get really cold and calculating about it, cancer is expensive, in terms of time and money and productivity. Cancer costs. And as baby boomers age, it's going to cost all of us more and more.

What can we do?

San Francisco, my favorite bastion of forward-thinking, politically active and highly paranoid citizens, was thinking of banning the chemical in children's products back in 2005. I'm having trouble finding out if the ban actually occurred, but the plastics industry went completely insane. You can read a great rebuttal from a Plastics Council hack here, or enjoy a "consumers" group that is completely dedicated to keeping bisphenol A in our products.

I wonder if there was a similar consumers group that was pushing to keep saccharine in our diet drinks?

Industry reps, of course, deny that there is any problem with bisphenol A, using this brilliant logic:

"This isn't a basketball game. You don't just count up studies and see what the score is," said Steven G. Hentges, executive director of the Polycarbonate Bisphenol A Global Group of the American Chemistry Council.

Actually, you CAN add up the studies and see what the score is. That's the whole point of studies. I mean, yes, many scientific studies are flawed, and other factors must always be taken into consideration. For instance, what if it turned out that every person tested in the bisphenol studies was a pack-a-day smoker. We'd expect to see elevated levels of cancer in smokers. But in this case, we're talking about 140 government-sponsored studies, not a few rogue studies by whacky environmentalists.

The Great Divide

As usual, this controversy seems to be divided along political lines. People who really love bisphenol A are either industry reps or Fox News contributors who run web sites that mock the hell out of Al Gore. Many sites that seem to take the concerns about BPA seriously are run by environmentalists.

But the Nation Institutes of Health is looking into this matter, so for now, the best we can do is really push for further studies to see if the amounts of BPA that we have in our bloodstream are really dangerous to us.

OK, fine, but really, how do I avoid this stuff?

Well, I wish that I could simply give you a list of things to avoid, but unless you are going to get Lasik surgery (since bisphenol A is found in glasses and contact lenses) and throw away your Nalgene bottle (and a host of other products), then really this is one of those issues where you have to get politically involved.

OK, fine. Here's a list of products that may contain bisphenol A, and some possible alternatives:

Hard, clear plastic baby bottles - EVERYONE knows that breast is best! Or use glass bottles like my parents did.
Hard, clear, sometimes tinted, plastic water bottles - I never liked those Nalgene bottles anyway.
Hard, clear plastic bowls, tableware, storage containers - Use glass and ceramic.
Liners inside food and drink cans - You shouldn't be drinking stuff from cans, anyway.
Dental sealant to prevent cavities - Brush your teeth! Don't let them seal your teeth with plastic!
Electronic equipment - Read a book. I can't think of anything else, because I love electronics equipment, and that's a broad category.
Sports safety equipment - I'm not going to suggest that you don't wear a helmet. WEAR A HELMET.
Medical devices - Too darn bad. Can't do without those.
Pet carriers - Would it be uncouth to suggest just bounding and gagging the little critters?
Spray-on flame retardants - Nope. Can't avoid these. Unless you shop for natural furniture and floors.
CD/DVDs - iTunes, baby.

Pretty tough to avoid all that stuff, isn't it?

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that there is a great answer out there as to how to deal with something as ubiquitous as this chemical. Plastics are an undeniably amazing product. But I'm starting to question just how many bits of Tupperware I need.

Also, I'm feeling bad about mocking the New York lady for taking her food to work in a mason jar. Maybe she has the right idea.

This article is from Andrea Karim of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread: