WHyyyyyy?! Why another one?
I’m an over-thinker by nature, and as an environmentalist and a parent, this tendency has been ramped up way more than I could have imagined. Being conscious of what we’re buying, where it has come from, what it’s afterlife will be—it’s exhausting. Seriously, over half of my “clutter” is just odds and ends of what most other people would easily call ‘trash’ that I just feel obligated to keep and find a use for so I don’t have to throw it in a landfill. And one of those collections in the garage is plastic FREAKIN hangers! I’m not even talking about the ones that are everyday, ‘closet’ hangers (that’s a whole other post). No, these are the hangers that stores attach to new shirts, underwear, socks. And I mean ‘attach.’ Have you every tried getting a new set of underwear off these ridiculous plastic hangers? argh!
Being on a clean-out phase where I’m trying to make peace with the fact that I simply cannot make a project out of every bit of waste from our lives, I thought I’d start with those silly, tangly, plastic store hangers. But first…. First, I needed to do a little research because, well, that’s what I do. And I’m dismayed, because, Yes, obviously this is a major problem. It makes my heart sink thinking about all these ‘throw-away’ hangers, even those teeny tiny hook ones that come on socks. I know that resting the weight of the world’s plastic problem on my shoulders is not helpful here, but I must vent or cry or whatever it is I’m trying to do here. The world- the ‘system’- has been set up for wastefulness. And it sucks. Many go along blindly, just keeping their homes Pinterest-perfect, tossing anything that’s no longer needed. And, I get it. I do. But a wake-up call is coming. For ALL of us. Not just the ones who stay up nights, tossing and turning, trying to figure out what to do with old CD cases and plastic hangers, but anyone on this planet. Because the horribly wasteful, negligent systems we have in place right now to keep people in this never-ending cycle of buying and spending and consuming and tossing–these systems aren’t working. The planet needs us to wake the heck up.
And the really tough part is, it’s not just plastic hangers or straws or floss containers. It’s everything! There’s SO MUCH STUFF. And, in a way, it’s not really our faults, because this is so much bigger than any of us. It’s not on me or you to save the world of these major problems…. But, then again, Yes. Yes, it absolutely is. We need to take a stand. We need to let companies know what we’re thinking and that we don’t like their practices. We need to seek out the companies that ARE doing conscious, good, sustainable practices. They are out there, and never has it been easier to find them and support them. We need to re-prioritize. Most people I know have way more money than they need. I am absolutely aware this isn’t the case everywhere. But those who have money can be making smarter choices. Buying less stuff at higher prices to support the change-makers who need to charge more to do it ‘right.’
We can do this! Bags, straws, hangers. These sound like small steps for a much, much bigger problem. But these are the steps that matter. The wake-up calls all of us need to look around us and start to question how our stuff got to us and what’s to become of it when we’re done.
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