Taking pollution down to zero - become a planateer!!!

I need your help! PLEASE. 

Do you remember me going on about microplastics and how it would be great to have some way of knowing if you are buying a good or bad product? Well, now you get to help me make that happen for South Africa... yip... all of you (my millions of blog readers... hmmm). There is an app available in other parts of the world that will tell you (when you scan the barcode) whether the product is green (no evil plastics), orange (phasing out evil plastics) or red (evil plastics abound). 

To make the app functional in South Africa I need information. I need to know all the different types of toothpaste, soaps, shampoos, body washes etc there are out there and I need to know what they have in them. So, it would be super helpful if you could explore in to the depths of your cupboards and tell me about your stock of personal hygiene stuff. AND ask all your friends to do so too, pretty please. 

I need the following, (but if it seems a hassle, just send me a reasonably good picture of the front and back of the product and I will sleuth what I need from the picture): 

• barcode
• retailer name
• manufacturer
• product name
• plastic ingredients  (do they contain: polyethylene (PE), Polypropylene (PP), Nylon, Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) or Polythylene Terphthalate (PET)?)

So, get to digging out your body glitter and foot scrub, deodorant and shaving products... I want to know all about them. I promise not to judge and it would be especially helpful if you do happen to have products that have plastic in so I can let people know about it. This needs to be South Africa only (sorry - supposedly barcodes are different in different countries, but I think we should double check this in Namibia because they are similar shops?) 

I look forward to hearing from you, easiest if you email me on shampton@ioisa.org... or my personal email address (that I don't really want to put on the internet for everyone to see). 

Let's BEAT THE MICROBEAD!!!! 

PS: Don't make me resort to pictures of eco-sadness to get you to help me....

I am thinking of adding this to the IOI-KIDS website, still a working process, but have included it here to give you idea of the issues

Consumerist Conservation

DINOSAURS!!!! 

I know that is an oxymoron, but however much we want to stand on a pedestal of conservation awesomeness, we all buy things!!! And it is hard to consistently make responsible decisions (especially on a limited budget). It is particularly hard because you don't always know if what you are doing is responsible or not. 

My recent pet hate is the use of plastic microbeads. The reason I feel so annoyed about this is because I actually have used facial scrubs and it didn't even cross my mind that washing my face would result in hundreds of little pieces of PLASTIC getting washed out into the sewage and possibly the ocean. WHO would think to put plastic in a face wash (or toothpaste). And so because I have looked into this in a very small way, I have also found out that sneaky plastic has snuck into other personal care products. 

What I really want is for there just to be an easy way to know when I am rushing to buy toothpaste because I ran out unexpectedly (pah! I don't run out of things unexpectedly, well... maybe food) that I am not inadvertently killing off hundred off fish and seabirds by buying that toothpaste instead of another. In fact, I would rather just shop somewhere that shares my feelings about these issues. 

My friends have heard my wax lyrical about Woolworths for reasons that have nothing to do with their environmental policies but I like the fact that they support the WWF SASSI campaign (of course, so does Pick n Pay) and they have a sustainability policy (read about it here). I honestly can't really afford to do my general grocery shopping at Woolworths but when shopping I want someone else to do my sustainability thinking for me. Of course, Pick n Pay also has a sustainability policy (which you can read about here and it includes a rad interactive green house). As I said in my last blog, there is pressure on big business to include social responsibility but that doesn't mean that all companies do.  Still, isn't that what we need? An easy way for people to do the right thing?? I mean, some people are willing to go the extra mile to do the right thing, but what we really want is for it to be easy and obvious for everyone.

Snuck into Kirstenbosch... No, I don't get in for free, 
but I do have friends that do! 

So, back to my pet hate, maybe we can make a list like this PRODUCT list for South Africa? Want to help me? (I have been in touch with beat the microbead - I think it is a cool app and important cause).


PS You SEE! Just after posting this I see something that says that a pair of jeans takes 10 589 liters to make... but you have to wear clothes, right?