by Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist (read the original in Noozhawk by clicking here)
You know those hot air-hand dryers in restaurant bathrooms? They are a pet peeve of mine.
Presumably, they’re designed to be environmentally friendly, by reducing trash in public restrooms. But they negate the sanitation of washing hands, by forcing hand-washers to open the door without a paper towel.
I’m now like my grandmother, walking around with a handkerchief like a proper lady.
Notwithstanding paper towels, the worst inventions are the whole category of disposable everythings.
You don’t have to read about the Pacific gyre of microscopic plastics to know we’ve created a monster of trash. Garbage — toxic or non, recycleable or not — has found its way into every corner or our earth, and beyond.
We have changed our habits for the better. We bring cloth bags to the grocery store, coffee mugs to meetings, and our own carry-out containers to restaurants (when we remember). But anti-progress rushes in on the other end.
There’s the case of plastic water bottles at kids’ soccer games. Even at home, we have more plastics instead of tap water or filtered water, hoping that recycling the bottles makes it all fine.
The case can be made that the wastage depends on what the plastic water bottles are replacing. If plastic water bottles for kids’ games replace cans of sodas, then you can’t deny progress has been made on the health front.
A positive additional transition would be to a jug of water with the little cone-shaped paper cups, at a fraction of the cost and waste. Or team mugs.
Soap dispensers rightfully belong in the disposable everything category, but deserve their own shout-out.
What was to improve upon with a bar of soap? A bar takes only one hand to operate, lasts longer, and is less expensive than a plastic bottle of soap. The packaging is a little piece of paper instead of yet another plastic container.
I’ll depart from packaging complaints, but need to stay in the bathroom a little longer. The slow-closing toilet seat lid is one of those inventions I wish could be un-invented.
You may be aware that when you flush a toilet with the lid up, the bathroom is instantly bathed in bacteria. That’s what closing the seat lid prevents. If the lid closes slowly, the bacteria bath has happened by the time the lid makes its leisurely way down.
It may seem from these least favorite things that I’m a germophobe. That’s not actually the case. One reason I prefer bar soap is that it generally doesn’t have antibacterial additives, which kill the good bacteria along with the bad.
I just finished a fascinating book called The Good Gut, about the colonies of microbiota flourishing (or not) in our lower intestines.
The book, by Justin and Erica Sonnenburg, describes how our microbiomes affect our health in countless ways. Establishing and maintaining a healthy biome means contact with a variety of types of non-pathogenic bacteria.
I’m a fan of good clean dirt.
What I’d really like is an invention that solves many problems at once. One such invention dates back at least 10,000 years. It is a way to increase your microbiota diversity, heal the earth, and de-stress from thinking about the worst inventions in the world.
Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist
Karen Telleen-Lawton is an eco-writer, sharing information and insights about economics and ecology, finances and the environment. Having recently retired from financial planning and advising, she spends more time exploring the outdoors — and reading and writing about it. The opinions expressed are her own.