Iβm surprised the youth of Lemmy hasnβt picked up more on the βliquid soap is bad for the environmentβ thing. I got berated at length by my Millennial SIL (me, GenX) for using liquid soap, and because this was family, I actually did a deep dive into the subject so I could win the argument and put her in her fucking place, and it turns out she was right.
Why did I have to learn this in meatspace, and not on the internet from random kids? Things ainβt right, I tell you, when my extended family knows and/or cares more about an environmental topic than left-leaning Lemmy.
they add preservatives because there is water
the shipping costs are higher
itβs just all-around modern wasteful
Less efficient in terms of transportation - youβre shipping a whole bunch of water that doesnβt add to the cleaning, which takes up more space, so less soap is being carried, etc.
Plastic packaging vs paper packaging for some solid soaps.
Some shower gels have microplastics for added abrasion, but so do some soaps tbf. Still, less good at cleaning because solid soaps involve more scrubbing.
Often canβt get everything out of the bottle. Some bottles donβt allow you to take the cap off and fill them with water to fully empty them.
Some shower gels have microplastics for added abrasion, but so do some soaps tbf. Still, less good at cleaning because solid soaps involve more scrubbing.
Congress passed a law banning these in 2015. Thatβs not to say micro plastics arenβt still present in some, or that they didnβt find loopholes, but the plastic beads in body wash issue was actually being addressed.
Why did I have to learn this in meatspace, and not on the internet from random kids? Things ainβt right, I tell you, when my extended family knows and/or cares more about an environmental topic than left-leaning Lemmy.
Because everything is on fire and while using less soap and laundry detergent bottles is certainly a good goal to aim for, it is rearranging deck chairs on the titanic and worse it is rearranging deck chairs according to the directions of a captain who is trying to distract everyone from dealing with the fact that the ship is sinking.
Recycling by and large doesnβt work but corporations really donβt care because recycling is a great way to sell consumers the experience of being environmental when consuming and it provides way to shift blame and get people focused on recycling rather than the actions of big corporations.
As recycling implodes as a cultural ritual of βdoing your partβ to save the environment there has been a rise in advertisements from companies selling smaller detergent and soap bottles and I think they are trying to fulfill the same emotional need and story .
Which isnβt to say these soap bottles arenβt a good thing, but if the left leaning people you interact with arenβt focused on thisβ¦ I donβt think that is indicative of anything but the high number of existential environmental problems we face and the general refusal of neoliberal and rightwing governments to tackle them.
Basically this.
Going green is good, but the reality is itβs out of the control of the average individual. Corporations sold us the blame, made us feel like we could do something so they could pass it off as our responsibility.
Even if every single low to middle income family took charge and did everything they could at their own inconvenience, the progress would still be far less in comparison to what the wealthy could achieve. Sadly, we barely ever think about this and even modern climate activists like that young Swedish girl have come to perpetuate the lie that the wealthy have sold us.
Not all recycling is useless. Aluminium and glass are two things that benefit greatly from recycling. Recycling aluminum takes 95% less energy than smelting it from ore, simply because itβs such a complex process. And recycling glass is just a matter of re-melting it.
Not debating that certain types of recycling work, but if we donβt disconnect the word βrecyclingβ from βwholesome and good!β we are going to keep hallucinating that we are in a far different problem than we are. so I am hesitant to start immediately listing all the types of recycling that do work when having a conversation about how recycling doesnβt work because that just reframes the conversation under terms of a status quo βrecycling just needs to be reformed to work for more things!β fashion in the same way that βclean coalβ is a purposeful dead end taken to postpone an upheaval of the status quo.
It all comes down to the same basic premise: we arenβt going to consume our way out of the climate catastrophe. I donβt blame people for thinking this, though. If youβve lived your whole life under an economy and social order whoβs keystone and ultimate guiding force is consumption, itβs easy to see consumption as your only recourse. Something something, if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like nails. Our only option is to completely dismantle the systems that catalyzed the climate crisis: embracing anti-capitalism, crushing special interests, and ultimately empowering working class people.
we arenβt going to consume our way out of the climate catastrophe. I donβt blame people for thinking this, though. If youβve lived your whole life under an economy and social order whoβs keystone and ultimate guiding force is consumption, itβs easy to see consumption as your only recourse.
I donβt blame people either, I was raised in the same frame of reference that we have to consume our way out of this crisis and that the environmental crisis is fundamentally a story of our collective moral failings to be personally responsible.
People want to fix things, and I will be the last person to say that helping out a little bit doesnβt go a long way. Itβs just, we need to evolve our understanding past framing the climate crisis as a story of our average people not having any personal responsibility to a frame of reference where we understand the class politics, the power of corporations to undermine environmentalism and the general collective solidarity between workers globally that will actually have the power to halt the climate crisis.
I didnβt mention recycling, but then, I didnβt mention much about the topic.
Itβs not recycling thatβs the issue. Itβs the fact that millions of people are paying to move mostly water around, which has - in aggregate - a huge impact in terms of fuel consumption. Each bottle of hand soap is not expensive to transport, and cleans far less, than a single bar of solid soap. And this isnβt the only environmental impact; recycling or no, bar soap requires far less packaging, and that packaging is often renewable resources that are bio-degradable, whereas liquid soap nearly uniformly requires quite a lot of plastic packaging.
These werenβt the only points in ecological favor of bar soap; I didnβt memorize the list, but the arguments were substantial, unequivocal, and not debatable. And easily discoverable online.
Weβve switched to solid shampoo β only drawback is it can be harder to tell which is shampoo and which is conditioner, because thereβs no single-use plastic telling me which is which.
I humbly ask for deletion of this information, so it stays off Lemmy! Bar soap is more βdenseβ, as you donβt need that much water for it which reduces required water in production, weight in shipping and less packaging. Bar soap is generally a bit more aggressive towards the skin however with higher pH.
My question is, why are concentrated soaps not bigger for human use like they are for animals? The shampoo and conditioner to wash my dog comes in a gallon jug and dilutes 50:1. That gallon jug lasts me years, and Iβm bathing a golden retriever that has a lot of hair. If shampoo came by default in a gallon jug we just had to mix once or twice a month with water in a separate bottle we would save so much plastic, so much cost, and so much transportation weight!
And concentrated products for pets are more common than diluted ones. So clearly we know how to do this, why donβt we do it for human stuff too by default?
For animals things are done practically. For humans things are done profitably.
I feel like most people just donβt need to look into it much. Like, itβs kind of obvious enough (if one is aware of it), that no plastic bottle is better than a plastic bottle, and itβs not like bar soap is a massive downgrade.
Personally, I tried them for climate min-maxing reasons, but then found out that I actually prefer them by a lot.
But then as the others said, itβs not like it will win the climate war. So, if someone does have a reason or even just a preference for liquid soap, thereβs no point in berating them specifically for that. Like, wash yourself with liquid soap all you want, and rather give some vegan food options an honest try or take the bus more often or something along those lines.
At 25 I lived in a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom house with 13 people in a beach town and chuckled to myself about how people waste so much money on having a house all to their own when they could be having so much fun, surrounded by friends every day. Sorry 25 year old me⦠I enjoy quiet, peeing indoors and not fighting over power usage and who left their dishes laying around.
I stopped using soap at 13 and Iβm a trillionaire.
My friend, Target has a knockoff Dove body wash for $2. Tell them to go fuck themselves.
$5.49, but whoβs counting?
WTF are you guys doing over there? 0.55β¬ in Germany: https://www.dm.de/balea-cremedusche-mandelbluete-und-magnolie-p4066447234657.html
I own a house, car, etc and I still make sure that I get every last drop of shampoo out of the bottle. Not saying that is how you save enough for down payment but just that they arenβt mutually exclusive.
