The Circular Story On Soap

With this in mind, here is a summarization of this week’s posts on suds, written in its circular story.

THE CIRCULAR STORY OF CONVENTIONAL SUDS

PRODUCTION
The suds are produced, most often by low wage workers, using hazardous chemicals, energy, and water.

PACKAGING
The chemical concoction is then packaged in plastic. This plastic will eventually end up in landfills or the sea. If it makes it into the recycling process, it will pollute further (as plastic is toxic even when positive processing) before getting a second life.

THEY COME HOME
We purchase those packaged items and take them into our homes.

WE USE THEM
In the various ways we wash, we wash our face, polluting the ocean with chemicals and plastic microbeads. We soap our bodies, wash our dishes, and shampoo our hair, absorbing and inhaling a host of toxic substances that have been linked to cancers, allergies, reproductive issues, and other health harms. And we wash our clothing, consuming water and energy while a host of pollutants fill our lungs, causing yet more health harms.

TOXINS ENTER OUR WATERWAYS
Whenever you’re using soaps or detergents, you’re using water as well, and thus, whatever ingredients are in the product you use end up in the water which goes down the drain, through a water treatment plant (which wasn’t designed to process these chemicals) ends up in our waterways, poisoning our wildlife.

WE EAT IT
This chemically rich water then makes its way in our crops and into the food chain, which we sit at the top of, and who created the pollution, from the producers to us consumers, are poisoned (again) by the very pollution we unconsciously created. And the circle is complete.

WANT TO CHANGE THE STORY?
Purchase products (ideally in bulk or biodegradable containers) created by conscious companies which won’t harm your health or our planet.