Why we Chose Products for Earwax and Boogers
June 12, 2020 · Aaron Burr
Earwax and boogers.
It’s exciting stuff.
Okay, so maybe it’s not that exciting when we think about removing our excess ear wax or blowing our nose. But when we find out the impact these simple things have on the planet, our fulfillment, and our mindset, dang...it starts to get a lot more exciting.
Sure, a cotton swab is no super charged electric car like a Tesla, but maybe LastSwab is the Tesla of cotton swabs. Woah, that’s bold.
Why the yucky things?
In the (notably honorable) pursuit of cleanliness, we have come up with the idea of single use items for personal hygiene. We dirty something and it gets thrown away, and this is a clean way to do things! But it's not so clean for the environment. It is important especially for practices in hospitals, but even those practices are beginning to reduce waste safely.
Things like boogers, spills, ear wax, and going to the bathroom have all depended on single use items to keep everything clean. This has led to staggering amounts of hygiene products being discarded daily.
Q tips are washing up on our shores, tissues are cutting down forest after forest, and for what?
Yucky things like blowing our nose or cleaning our ears can be pretty harmless, especially when we are using a well designed product that is able to be cleaned easily. Such as LastTissue and LastSwab.
The daily actions that add up consist of the less-than-exciting things
Food, how we get to work or to the grocery store, personal hygiene routine, clothing. None of these things are super duper exciting when we think of environmental activism, but they are exciting in the impact they can have. And they can have such a large impact simply because they are a regular part of our lives.
Things like personal hygiene, whether it be brushing our teeth, cleaning our ears, or blowing our nose, can really begin to add up over time. Both in the sense of millions of cotton swabs and tissues being thrown out, and in the sense that those actions overflow into other aspects of our lives.
When we blow our nose with a paper tissue and toss it in the garbage, this develops a pattern and habit to do this with many things, whether it be getting to-go cups, straws, packaged food, etc. Zero waste has a huge impact on mindset, and the unattractive things like ear wax and boogers will affect that mindset too, if not more.
So it’s official, boogers and earwax are in fact exciting
Maybe a reusable cotton swab isn’t a supercharged electric car. But it may send just as powerful of a message, which then sends rippling effects into the world. And not to mention, a LastSwab is a bit more affordable.
The sustainability movement is a web of different actions that we have to take.
Different actions will have different impacts. Some impacts will be smaller, some larger. But, in order to live a life in line with our values, we mustn’t forget about the things that are still important simply because they aren’t glamorous or popular.
Standing up, casting your vote, protesting, and putting pressure on the government are all very important, but a lot of the work also lies in the space where no one will see. Down in the nitty gritty of our lives, whether that be our diets and transportation, or daily things like cleaning up spills, or removing ear wax.