By Elise Jones, babybites blog editor
I’ve come to a point where sometimes I struggle with the choices I make and the ones I should be making.
Case in point, the peanut butter jar. When I’m done with my peanut butter, it’s time to recycle the jar. I HATE washing it out (a requirement for recycling). Peanut butter is the most difficult thing to get loose from the sides of the jar. Plus it takes tons of water (a point made just yesterday by Heather) and makes everything so oily! So what gives, PB jar?
Well before giving up on it all, I investigated what the environmental loss of not recycling the plastic bottle and using loads of water to get that sucker clean would be. And you thought the PB jar was going to do me in. Well not after what I found; read on!
- Over 7 billion pounds of plastic are thrown away in the U.S. each year. Only 18 million pounds of that, about one quarter of 1 percent, is recycled. Source: Earth911
- Chlorine production for plastic uses almost as much energy as the annual output of eight medium-sized nuclear power plants each year. Source: CleanAir.org
- Today, 80 percent of Americans have access to a plastics recycling program. Source: American Chemistry Council
- Plastic does not break down in landfill, and since it can be recycled to make many diverse products, effort should be made to recycle all plastic waste. Source: Earth Easy
Next up, think about that running water:
- Hand dishwashing in a kitchen faucet uses 3 gallons of water per minute! Source: Community Science Action Guide
- Letting your faucet run for five minutes uses about as much energy as letting a 60-watt light bulb run for 14 hours. Source: EPA
- Water efficiency benefits include less pollutants entering our water systems and reducing the amount of energy needed to supply and treat water.
My solution: keep a basin of water & dish rag near/in your sink to rinse out jars, bottles, cups, plates, etc that are just going into recycling or the dishwasher. No need for these things to use clean water to be rinsed since they are either going into recycling or into the dishwasher. Also, buy a pair of plastic gloves to use when you rinse off in this bin so you don’t have to wash your hands each time you dip into the bowl.
Baby steps.