Saturday, 14 February 2015

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #444 Ditch the Q-Tip / Cotton Bud

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #444 Ditch the Q-Tip / Cotton Bud


When I was young our cotton buds (in American that’s q-tips) had wound paper sticks with the cotton ‘buds’ on each end. Sadly they changed to making the stick part out of plastic, probably because it’s cheaper. How do you keep those tiny lengths of plastic out of your life? The answer is simple – just don’t buy them. Apparently, from all the research I’ve done on the Internet, the consensus is that we should not be putting anything into our ears anyway, because we risk damaging the eardrum, and nature has created our bodies with inbuilt protections such as perspiration, tears and earwax. Yep. Earwax is a natural body function and should be left alone. Read all about how and why at http://theconversation.com/health-check-what-you-need-to-know-about-ear-wax-31302 which provides an excellent article on the topic.
Keeping small pieces of plastic out of our lives and out of the environment is important. These small pieces are often mistaken by birdlife as food for their babies, thereby causing the deaths of birds in large numbers as they eventually die of starvation when real food is unable to pass through their plastic-filled stomachs. Small plastic also goes into water systems where it partially breaks down and is ingested by fish – we then eat the fish. Small plastic pieces = big environmental impact. Delete as much out of your life as you can.

No comments: