Yes, soap. I mean the hard bricks of various cleaning product conglomerates that get sudsy when wet and supposedly clean germs off your body when scrubbed away.
When I look at soap at my local big box shopping center or grocery store, (which is- of course- where most of us Americans get our soap these days, whether brick-like or liquid), all I can do is curse the insanity of what sits neatly on the metal shelving before me. These bricks of cleaning products used everyday by us consumers, and in great quantities, annoy me for this reason:
***bars of soap are most often packaged in individual paper boxes, compiled into larger bricks of various quantities, and then shrink-wrapped with plastic product to hold the masses together!***
Seriously, what an utter waste of packaging! What is the matter with us?! Do soap manufacturers think that they will contaminate soap if they rub up against another bar?? Really? It's soap, not ground beef!
I understand the need to be able to conglomerate a desired number of pre-boxed bars and also that putting multiple bars against one another might make them flake and lose some of the 'product', but seriously-- I'd rather lose a few flakes of soap than consume so many trees and create so much plastic waste (and ALL the energy used to create that plastic).
Honestly!
How did this happen? When did American society, and consumer society in general, come to think that packaging such a simple bathing essential such as soap in this excessive way was a good idea? Did we transfer this mentality from other consumer goods such as contaminate-able food products? When did presentation of this particular consumer good to the buying public become so hell bent on being 'pretty,' as opposed to practical and based on common sense?
Of course, this is only one example from the great macrocosm of consumer goods available ubiquitiously across the country, and indeed across the industrialized world. Stop for just a freakin' moment while you are grocery shopping or picking up your toiletry supplies, and contemplate how much energy-- both in packaging and fossil fuels used to create and transfer that packaging to market-- was expended in order to create your 12-pack soap, or butter in perfect 4 stick boxes, or cereal inside a bag inside a box, or 12oz shampoo bottles with un-recyclable tops, or 6oz liquid hand soap dispensers with un-recyclable pumpers, and on and on....
So, you think, what's the answer to this?
I've thought about joining a Sam's Club or Costco, my 2 local bulk supply stores, both requiring due-paying membership. This would cut down on the packaging due to products sold in bulk, right? Well, not always. Often, products are packaged exactly the same way as in your normal stores, but simply in greater quantities, e.g. 12-packs become 50-packs, meaning-- individual packaging does not disappear, but you get a discount anyway for buying more units in a single purchase. Why not decrease the packaging as well, and provide the customer even more savings by passing along those saved costs to package a product? I would also like to point out here, as I failed to incorporate this above, that less packaging = less product weight & size, thereby costing the suppliers/distributors less to transport AND more product could be shipped per truck/train/plane. Duh!
AND- with all that money saved by everyone, we can spend our savings elsewhere. To the product supplier, that means more free consumer money to spend on other products (perhaps the same company???......) and we are not killing ourselves and our only Earth to consume those things.
But back to Sam's Club and Costco.
I don't believe in Sam Walton or either of his two creations: Walmart and Sam's Club. That is an entirely different blog entry, and I won't go into that here. Suffice it to say that there is plenty of data out there showing the negative affects that this consumer goods conglomerate has on the environment, the economy, and human rights. Do your own research.
Nevertheless, both consumer bulk goods suppliers aren't the ideal candidate for solving this problem. Nor do I have the answer. Feel free to send suggestions on this one, because this problem is WAY bigger than my pithy complaints about soap.
I'd like to think that local co-op groceries are part of the answer, though. I've never set foot in one (that I can remember), as they are often more expensive to shop and sometimes require either a due-paying membership or a committment of a few hours per month working there. Also, they are often inconveniently located, and sparse in number-- being that they are often in city centers or neighborhoods I haven't lived in. And, driving further than normal (to my local grocery store, for example, which is less than 5 miles), such as 10-15 miles every time I want to shop for food or household basics seems counter-productive in reducing my environmental impact. Not to mention the smaller quantities of goods transported in & smaller, less fuel-efficient vehicles used to transport those goods to market. I get it. But co-ops (such as the newly refurbished one in the Linden Hills neighborhood of Minneapolis) provide a place for the likes of me to cut my own soap off a giant block and bring it home in a reusable sack. I plan to start checking out these meccas of environmentally-conscience (or perhaps just the local wealthy) consumers more often.
Is this good enough? Can this co-op model replace, or at least grow better at supplementing the late 20th-21st century American model of driving to big-box stores containing just about everything? It is like an addiction we just can't get away from. Furthermore, our transportation and residential infrastructure is built around the big-box model, or at least is accommodated greatly by it. How, then, do we break free?
I guess that's my lingering question. Having come to appreciate the fact that I can drive 5-10 minutes and find products manufactured all over the world, in great variety, quantity, and even choice-- how do we amend and evolve the situation into the next era? Clearly, what we're doing is not sustainable. But I like it, in its own way. In another, I completely loathe it and its basic market and consumption principles.
In the end, we have to eat, we need to clothe ourselves, and -- we need to bathe (or at least I hope you do). We just need to do it in a way that is less short-sighted and wasteful.
Do I really need all these choices? Do I really need two or three layers of cardboard separating my bars of soap??......
And, what can I do about it?
