Environmentally Friendly at Home

For years now we have thought that the word biodegradable meant a good thing. That it always meant that plastic bags would degrade into completely environmentally friendly elements. Those biodegradable plastic bags you get at the supermarket, the ones you always thought were "biodegradable". Well They aren't, not when they are put in landfills and are not exposed to the sunlight that is necessary for activating the oganisms that break them down. Even when they are exposed and are "totally" broken down, they are water, CO₂ and plastic particles. Not exactly what everyone expected.

Nothing is as it seems: The word needs to be spread that all things aren't as they seem to be. Literally all things can be labeled "natural" because everything is made from products of nature and therefore companies feel they can use this term to apply to their product. These days the word biodegradable is just as over used in our vocabulary. It is true that everything will eventually degrade. However, even that is not always environmentally friendly, DDT is technically biodegradable, however the two components it breaks down into are very toxic themselves and are even more dangerous than DDT itself. So there is a difference between biodegradable and environmentally (and people) friendly.

What can you do?: There are many things the general public can do to be more environmentally friendly and help nature along. One simple thing would be to simply purchase reusable grocery bags made out of natural materials such as cotton, jute, or other natural materials. If a plastic bag is necessary then use it as much as possible. I know a woman who used to buy green plastic bags, use them first at the laundromat for clean laundry, then for dirty laundry, then for trash bags. That is three full uses out of just one bag. She probably could have used them for more, but that is a very good start that most anyone can do. There are also bag holders of some sort that you can put those plastic grocery bags in order to store for reusing. We can even do the same with paper bags, there are many people who get the paper bags at the store, bring them home and fold them up in order to reuse over and over again. There are many uses for paper bags, you can cut them open and use them under messy activities instead of newspaper, they are thicker than newspaper and thus do a better job.

These are just a few of the things we can do in order to be more environmentally friendly at home. We shouldn't rely on big businesses to do everything that is environmentally friendly, because everyone fails. There are many, many things that we can do around our homes in order to assist mother nature.