Now, pay more for eco bogrolls

I don't get it with the loo paper snobbery. A friend of mine mentioned that he visited an ultra posh house in the Northern suburbs the other day and noticed that the loo paper was single-ply. Okay, so perhaps many of us pick up that this one uses coloured paper, that one uses paper with monotoned little dogs on it, and yet the other one has muliticoloured butterflies. But is it because we are merely observant people, or could it be that we are bogroll snobs?

Clearly the aforementioned friend is the latter. He thinks that if you can afford gold taps, then how could you stoop so low as to use single-ply. To me this is rather a superficial assumption.

One can tell a certain amount about one's friend in the roll of paper hanging on the wall. You see, most people use plain white double ply virgin paper because that is the acceptable norm. It's like the white cotton panties of the sensible school girl. Once you step out of that norm, you are labelled.

The first group are interesting. What type of person buys full-colour butterfly-emblazoned paper to wipe their asses with? Someone who thinks the sun shines out of it, or someone who has a chip on their shoulder? Perhaps they just lepidopterous (or not). I certainly wouldn't be too overjoyed as a butterfly. But to be sure, they are not normal. Perhaps extraverted introverts, who want attention but are too shy to ask for it. They are generally women who like to scrapbook, collect photos, and watch Bollywood movies. A harmless enough species who have a long way to evolve.

Then there is the other end of the spectrum, the single-ply, no nonsense, recycled paper toilet paper. This loyal roll was around since time immemorial. Cheap and efficient. Uncoloured and unbleached. Saved a lot of trees being chopped down and the planet alot of unnecessary damage. Sturdy and just the right texture for a clean wipe. A winning formula.

But wait. Some capitalist had to jump on the eco-bandwagon didn't he? So now it's really not good enough that you use good old-fashioned Highveld or Carlton rolls. No. Now there's a brand new brand with a brand new trendy shmancy name and boy, you better believe it, it's going to cost you more. It's going to cost you more because you care, not about the environment but because that new friend that comes to visit you just won't understand that you are not low-class, but that you are part of the green-movement.

Plastic in a PET bottle

Not being much of a consumer I tend to stay clear away from anything that resembles a place where there is a lot of frenzied activity of goods being pawed off shelves and thrown into trolleys. Or places where a lot of Chinese junk is displayed, plastic or otherwise - challenging, but best left as another story for another blog.

I had dragged myself off to the the nearest Pick 'n Pay last Sunday, whilst the neighbours across the river were having their weekly bible-punching, drum-banging, tongue-thrashing, lung-busting session. The shopping 'spree' was way overdue anyway; poor old loverboy was living on peanuts and raisins for 3 weeks, and we almost broke up over the last vegetarian sausage.

So there I was, standing absent-mindedly at the beverages in the refrigerator section. Before my very eyes I saw something that looked like baby upchuck. In a bottle. A plastic one, what do you expect. Flavoured. Strawberry and banana. Peach, Passion Fruit and Citrus. I shan't go on lest I lose my appetite.

Give me a break. Who in their right minds firstly came up with the lame idea of bottling cow's milk with fruit chaos and calling it smoothies, and secondly, concocted those combinations? Whatever happened to simplicity? The art of subtlety has ridden off into the sunset. And never mind that... The whole affair gave me a spasm, those bottles - standing there all neatly in rows like little soldiers with bland, badly-designed uniforms, all in need of a good night out and sex with a prostitute.

It started off with bottled water. Then as if to add insult to injury: flavoured, bottled water. Then iced tea. And inbetween, before and after - a pandora's plastic box full of equally horrendous ideas all poured and crammed into polyethylene terephthalate bottles for our consumering pleasure. Why thank you so f*#%ing much and now... ta-rah! we now have the drink that everyone has been waiting for. Except that, you know... smoothies should be whizzed up with fresh fruit and poured over the rocks into long tall glasses, garnished with mint and sipped through a straw. And if you can't have it that way then it's best that you don't have it at all.

So this incident led me to think once again, where will we ever stop with the packaging already? On the one hand we are urged to reduce, reuse and recycle; on the other hand we are handed almost everything in a plastic container. It's all very confusing really, because I for one would like to support retailers who make a concerted effort to go green, but when you pause to look at the details, all they are doing is greenwashing. I would rather support those who make no promises or mention green, than those like Woolworth's who shout it from the rooftops and yet still their products are dressed up to kill.

With such intelligent minds in our midst who can conceive of life-changing ideas as smoothies in a bottle, nevermind that it might taste like plastic, perhaps they should focus their energies on more environmentally-friendly package design, because even though that PET bottle is recyclable, the first R is Reduce.

The real effects of your Deodorant

Deodorants, anti-perspirants, sweat-and-stink-maskers, whatever you want to call it, canned under pressure, and sprayed under the armpits and into the atmosphere, is certainly one of the worst inventions of modern living.

What goes into your Deodorant

If you think about it, all we're doing is buying a cocktail of hazardous chemical waste: methyl, propyl, butyl and ethyl parabens, aluminium chlorohydrate, aluminium zirconium tetrachlorohydrex, acid trygliceride, stearath, stearyl alcohol - and oh yes -a bit of artificial fragrance. Ever wonder whether the list of ingredients are printed so small is because they actually don't want you to take notice, or the list is so long that if the font size was any bigger it would reach Koeberg.

Be Aware of the Real Issues

Now I don't take much note about news articles that scare me one day and let me off the hook the next. Having turned somewhat jaded about health issues, what's safe and what's not, I am not about to go loading myself up with green tea because some research touts how drinking litres of the stuff makes the Japanese live 20 times longer, and then jumping off a building the next day because some scientist discovered it makes one impotent. Give me a break.

Treat Deodorants like a Ticking Time Bomb

But come on, there are certain things that are plain and simple if one only catches a wake up and instead of smelling the deodorant samples, they should really smell the coffee beans. If something has 27 ingredients, most of which ordinary people -those who are not scientists, botanists or zoologists - cannot pronounce without hesitating, then isn't it obvious, people, that we should stay clear the hell away from it? Perhaps call in the chemical waste company and ask them to dispose of it safely. Treat it like a ticking time bomb, anything but actually releasing into the air.

All in the Name of Commerce
But we do. We humans actually do. We do the dumbest of dumbass things. We work hard, to earn some money, to give it to some commercial giants, to stick junk into our mouths, and to spray ourselves with sneeze-inducing, disease-forming chemicals. Why?
Because men passing you in the street will run after you with flowers and proposals?

Good grief, are we dumb. Not because we believe the ads but that we are so desperate that we allow ourselves to be brainwashed, which in turn makes us semi-blind, so we can't see the small print, olfactorily-challenged, so that we can't smell the bullshit, and deaf, so that we don't hear them laughing all the way to the bank.

Get to the Root of Body Odour

If you are one of those who cannot do without your BO camouflage, wash! If washing doesn't work then the problem is much more profound and I would suggest a dietition or nutritionist. Failing that then scrape the bottom of the barrel and go and see your doctor. Body odour is caused by rotting flesh putrifying in the pit of your intestines, fuelled by fizzy drinks and other gut-blowing cocktails, there the gaseous delight from deep within spreads across all the cells of your body and infuses its stench, ultimately radiating outward throught the pores of your skin, freeing itself outward into the world and engulfing innocent bystanders.

By wearing deodorant you may as well write a big "I have BO" on your back. Quite frankly, I don't know which of the two evils smell worse, but the combination... hoo boy, hand me the gas mask.