Ho.Guests: De-Plastification

by Minu Agarwal

Hi P, thank you for inviting me to foocloho. Loving it! I'm here to share my thoughts about something I dread: PLASTIC. A friend once told me about a product-designer friend of his, who was designing packaging for a disposable shaver. The packaging looked cool, but apparently the packaging had more plastic in it than the shaver! That just stuck in my head and since then have been trying to rid my life of all unnecessary plastic.

First one to go was liquid body wash (contained in a plastic bottle) replaced by the trusty old soap bar. Who wants to smell like a pomegranate anyway after a shower? So in the last two years, we (my husband and I) 'prevented' or at least reduced the demand for 24 plastic bottles. I now buy soap at all kinds of discount stores like Marshalls etc. which have awesome deals on high quality triple milled soaps. They last longer, don't dry out the skin and leave less scum. Also got me a nice soap dish to make sure they dry out after use. I do keep a small bottle of liquid soap for guests, in case they don't want to use the 'communal' soap.

Also, when I buy soap bars, I look out for packaging that can be used in some way instead of just tossing it out. I found soap bars packaged in pretty boxes (as seen below) at Marshalls. I reuse them as a jewelry boxes or just to store small knick knacks. But no matter where you buy or what packaging the soap bars come in, I think we can safely assume that the soap bar packaging is usually less wasteful than liquid soap.

I reused this box to store jewelry

All images taken by Minu Agarwal

About Minu:
Minu works in the field of Sustainable Design. She shares what she enjoys most with her family and friends on her provocatively titled blog: "What's wrong with the right things?". She recently discovered her passion for being an entrepreneur with a venture started in early 2011 called realism.in. Minu lives with her husband in Atlanta working towards her way to a dream retirement in the Himalayas. When I asked her about what she likes to do in her free time, she said: 'apart from annoying my husband, I like to cook, snoop around the city on my bike and paint'.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thank you for your contribution Minu, I'm sure foocloho-ians will enjoy this read!