The problems of the world

One week to go before Christmas. I must say I am looking forward to the holidays. Having been sick for three weeks it will be nice to do absolutely nothing and enjoy it. I have sore throat, I cough and sneeze and blow my nose every five minutes. Every muscle is aching, as is the head, and still I need to go to the office. Being a responsible adults truly sucks. Last time I had a flu in January, and as a nice complication got the shit eye that was my source of constant joy and happiness for 8 long months. I am waiting in breathless horror what will come after this flu.

Last week I found kumquats in our corner store. The said corner store doesn't even sell a product as exotic as soy sauce so I was very surprised and despite the astronomical price of the kumquats decided to buy them. There was a bit of a trouble because the cashier did not know the code for kumquats and in the end two of the cashiers were trying to figure out how to sell the kumquats to me. They called someone who knows everything and I got my precious fruits. I think they were thinking foreigners have peculiar tastes. Like, who on earth would like to buy those strange little lemons?

Kumquats!

I don't remember if I already mentioned winning at a raffle last weekend at a Christmas market. In addition to a bottle of wine at the bottle raffle I also won a basket full of books, chocolates, wines, teas, everything. That's the best for a sick weekend like mine. I have just been shuffling the pages of the books, trying to decide which one to start reading. Yesterday I forced myself to go out to get a bit of fresh air and found a fascinating store that sells a lot of food unpacked. They'll proved a glass jar or you can bring your own and refill it there. I have seen the store about one hundred times but it has always been so late that it has been closed. Now I am really excited abut this concept of buying in bulk. I could just go there and fill my own jars. I didn't need anything for the pantry this time, so I bought some shampoo in a pretty glass jar. It was rather expensive, but hey, you'll have to pay for experiences, right?

Christmas basket

All in all it is nice to buy something that is not wrapped in plastic. Lately Facebook has been flooded with articles about the damage plastic is doing especially to marine ecosystems and every time I see a beautiful ocean littered with all we throw away, my heart bleeds. That is why I wanted to write something about the dangers of plastic. So OK, it is a cheap and easy material but not all things cheap and easy are good. (Fast food is cheap and easy but it makes you fat and sick, narrowing the blood vessels and increasing the risk for heart attack.) However, the problem of today's world is that it's pretty impossible to lead a non-plastic life, even a reduced-plastic life because plastic is in everything. Here are just a few examples and some brainwash articles, if you'd like.

Shampoo in a jar

1. Food. Most of our food comes packed in something, quite often in plastic. OK, yogurt must be packed in something, the same goes for cheese and beans and spices. But do bananas actually need a plastic wrapping? No Think about it. No. I am not saying I am opposed to packing food in plastic because it makes their shelf-life longer and even for the sake of hygiene it is necessary to pack food. What I am saying is that we should really think about how all those plastic packages could be recycled or re-purposed. Now they'll just end up in the landfill. And they will not degenerate. Soon even food itself will contain plastic, see number 2.

2. Cosmetics. In addition to being packed in plastic containers, e.g. toothpastes and peeling gels can contain microbeads that are too small to be caught in waste water filter, thus ending up polluting oceans and lakes. If they end up in bodies of water, fish and birds mistake them for something edible, feeding on them. If there is no interest in the well-being of other species, let's think as selfishly as usual. If the fish eat plastic and you eat the fish, you'll also eat the plastic. It's not going anywhere. Talking about biomagnification, the same is true for pesticides and other harmful substances.

3. Clothes. Yoga pants are killing the world. I happen to love yoga and don't really want to say negative things about it even indirectly, but the unpleasant fact is that there is a lot of plastic in most stretchy fabrics. When these clothes are washed, they will shed microscopic particles of plastic that will most likely make their way through any filters and into the wild.

Christmas tree decorated with tons of plastic

4. What not. Plastic can be found in our cars, computers, houses, furniture, kitchenware.. In Pacific Ocean there is a garbage patch the size of two states of Texas (or the entire USA, according to some researchers). We don't have a better option than plastic, yet. But that doesn't mean there will never be and it doesn't mean that the enormous problem with all that waste is not alarming and true. It is. So, all in all, I am happy that there are stores that sell stuff unpacked. And while consuming is probably never environmentally friendly, at least I can buy a better conscious by buying my food in reusable glass jars.