Waste, Politics, and the Environmental Crisis (Fall 2022)

Cotton tote bags (tote bags in general) have picked up major popularity in recent years due to the growing understanding of how bad plastic bags are for the environment. Companies market totes as the environmentally friendly alternative because they are reusable and not made of plastic. It is very much “plastic bad” “other materials good”, not taking into account that reusable bags can have major environmental impacts that are just not as obvious to the public. It’s one of the primary effects of this newfound attack on plastic not being an acceptable material, but ignoring that other commonly used materials such as cotton can be detrimental to the planet as well. The tote bag has become one of the most common forms of ‘corporate environmentalism’ (firm-level efforts to reduce pollution and resource use along with protecting natural habitats). The reason why cotton tote bags are so harmful is because of how much resources are needed for cotton to grow. Cotton is known to use absurd amounts of water for it to grow, it being up there for the most water consuming crop between what it needs to grow and the processing process to turn it into textile products. Cotton farming is the primary reason for which the Aral Sea dried up, cotton farms surrounded it and quickly drained most of the water over the latter half of 20th century and early 21st century. Even though plastic bags are by no way good for the environment a cotton tote bag needs to be used around 20,000 times or for 54 years daily for it to totally offset the resources needed for its production. I can confidently say that 99%+ of tote bags are not going to be used for that long that frequently. After they are used you can not even recycle them because the logos, writing, or prints on them are most often PVC-based and those are incredibly hard to break down and are not recyclable. The only way to recycle them is to cut out the prints, but that accounts for 10 – 15% of fabric on average. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but adds over time, however still better than not being able to recycle at all. People will most likely not take the time to take this measure. Aside from the water needed to make them, a large part of the reason why cotton tote bags are having such a negative impact is because they are produced in copious amounts. Companies will often give them out for free or they will be very cheap, depending on where you get them. This semesterI have been given three reusable bags (although one non-cotton bag). 

One of my families cotton tote bags

• Sources

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/style/cotton-totes-climate-crisis.html

https://brightly.eco/blog/cotton-tote-bag-environmental-impact

https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/cotton

Most tampon applicators are made of two or three pieces of plastic, but some are made of cardboard. Cardboard tampon applicators are generally said to be a greener alternative to plastic applicators because they can biodegrade. I had a hard time finding any information on the production of cardboard tampon applicators and how it affects the environment, almost everything I found was talking about the benefits. I wonder if the difficulty is, at least in some part, due to the lack of research and writing about the topic. One thing I was able to find was a paper about the impacts of various menstrual products, which mentions that chromium is something that is “emitted through energy use during the manufacture of raw materials such as cardboard, paper, and wood pulp via the combustion of fossil fuels”, and negatively affects plants.

There was more readily available information about the end of the cycle (pun intended). Cardboard applicators generally can biodegrade, if in the right conditions, however, the applicator is often put back in the (usually plastic) wrapper before being put in the trash, which would make biodegradation more unlikely. They cannot be recycled because they are “contaminated with menstrual blood”, so they end up wherever the trash for the specific building is taken. Even if they were able to be recycled, I think the likelihood of someone putting them in the recycling is low. I don’t often see recycling containers in bathrooms, and it doesn’t seem likely that someone would take just the applicator with them from the bathroom in order to put it in the recycling.

My dad is a very eco-centric guy. He got solar panels on our old house, and when we moved to the Amherst area he made sure to pick a house with solar panels. He has a garden where he grows most of our vegetables, a compost bin for compost, and a few bee boxes for honey. He leases his cars, so he gets a new one every 3 years, and the last 4 of them have been electric. Except, this year, when his lease was up, he instead went all out and bought himself his dream car: a Tesla. For such an eco-friendly guy, getting a Tesla seems like, an elaborate practical joke, or something?

Tesla loves to brag about how eco-friendly they are. See: https://www.tesla.com/impact/environment
Lots of data, blah blah blah, electric cars are better for the environment, graphs and charts, etc.

Better for the environment carries such weight to it. Am I helping the environment by using it? No – it really means electric cars are the lesser evil. They say clearly in that report: “Gas cars: 70 tons of CO₂e released into the atmosphere; Electric cars: 30 tons of CO₂e released, assuming current global grid mix.” And yes. We have plenty of data to show us that it is more a lesser evil than a net “better.” But Tesla’s hypocrisy, in particular, is what people always seem to neglect. Do you know of the other companies Elon owns? Do you know where the profits of Tesla are funneled into? There’s Tesla and newly Twitter, sure, but then there’s SpaceX and the Boring Company. SpaceX, in case you didn’t know, is a rocket and satellite company. Need I tell you how much that emits? But the Boring Company, most famously known for their Flamethrower (more oil?? why??), is just fucked up. His whole “hyper loop” idea? That’s not Tesla. That’s Boring Company.

What do they do at the Boring Company?

They manage and operate tunnel boring machines, which are essentially massive ramrods to destroy rock and make tunnels. The dude hates the environment so much he is literally pummeling it with oil powered crap and then launching oil powered crap off of it and then producing his cars in oil powered crap and then selling them to people like my dad and convincing them that Elon and Tesla’s missions are “dedicated to the environment.”

Choose an object that you often interact with that is typically considered to be a ‘green’ item, or one that is better for the environment more broadly compared to conventional versions. Try to search on the internet what ‘non-green’ factors go into its production, and what happens to it at the end of its life cycle. (Do no more than 30 minutes of searching and reading, unless you want to.) Include links to your sources.

Readings for this week:

Bosler, Cayte. “Plans To Dig the Biggest Lithium Mine in the US Face Mounting Opposition.” Inside Climate News. November 7, 2021.  https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07112021/lithium-mining-thacker-pass-nevada-electric-vehicles-climate/

Pellow, David N. “The Global Village Dump: Trashing the Planet.” In Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice. Urban and Industrial Environments. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2007, 97-146.

Tong, Xin, and Jici Wang. “The Shadow of the Global Network: E-Waste Flows to China.” In Economies of Recycling: The Global Transformation of Materials, Values, and Social Relations, edited by Joshua Reno and Catherine Alexander. New York: Zed Books, 2012, 98–116.