A reader question:
Dear Editor,
As your readers already know, the New England thing before preppy ethos is built on the foundation of natural fibers and wares, things that will last, growing older with you and becoming both more comfortable and somehow a bit more noble, composting along with you when you are gone. This ethos extends to the love of the land and sea, even to our homes and cars.
Over the last few generations, the introduction of plastics, and thus microplastics and nanoplastics, into our land, our sea, and the bodies of all creatures, has been immense. While some amount of plastic is inescapable, the plastics most likely to enter our bodies can, in good part, be replaced with non-plastic, traditional materials that work as well or better.
The kitchen is an obvious starting point, and I will spare all the recitation of kitchen replacements, but brooms and brushes, even toothbrushes, made from palmyra, tampico, horse hair, boar bristle, and so on are available. The various cloths we use are available in cotton, linen, bamboo, and the like make it possible for us to skip the polyester. Beeswax impregnated cloth can keep our produce, bread, leftovers, and more better than plastic cling wrap. Products like Blueland replace laundry soap and dishwasher pellets that are not only packaged in plastic but use plastics in the products themselves as surfactants. Even something like salt often comes from the ocean and brings microplastics with it, some salts more than others. Rather than enumerating my own list, I would love to hear others' solutions and sources.
Peace, Vecchio Vespa
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