DIP 045: Life is plastic

Plus, Black-grown cotton t-shirts, saliva-based health monitors, and three-pronged buy-DIY-sell models

👋 Hi. Joke’s on me for finding the spark to write about an idea I’ve been sitting on for a year just two weeks after introducing a new format… Isn’t that how it always goes, though?

As always, respond with questions, comments, or thoughts about anything you read here.

The Chips ⛄️

• COMOCO Cotton, founded by Stephen Satterfield, sells Black-owned, Black-grown, undyed t-shirts.

• What do we think of Lura’s saliva-based continuous health monitor? (I think they should pull a Starface and make it look like a tooth gem.)

• If Floyd luggage made grocery carts, it would be Roulette.

• After shuttering her namesake brand earlier this year, jumpsuit queen Ilana Kohn is back with Samet.

• A hot and true take I can’t take credit for: the Sydney Sweeney x Dr. Squatch bathwater-infused soap wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if sex work was legal.

• Leche sells freeze-dried donor breast milk as well as tools that allow people to freeze-dry their own breast milk and donate milk.

  • This three-pronged model is not dissimilar to Cofertility, which facilitates egg freezing, egg donation, and donor matching.

The Dip 💾

When Girlfriend Collective launched in 2016, it generated buzz by giving away leggings for free. Girlfriend was the first brand I can remember that described its products as being made from recycled water bottles, while Rothy’s followed soon after.

I’ve been skeptically curious (a permanent state of mind) about the recycled bottle messaging. From a functional standpoint, recycled plastic isn’t breathable—it absorbs oils and odors and doesn’t let go. (I remember overhearing many conversations circa 2018 about managing the Rothy’s smell…)

There’s also the issue of end-of-life. In theory, these brands are diverting plastic from landfills and oceans (great!), but what happens at the end of a product’s life? It ends up in a landfill because clothing made with polyester doesn’t decompose and can’t be recycled again…

The recycled bottle messaging addresses consumer climate anxieties at the point of purchase, offering a feel-good way in at the start of a product’s life while overlooking its full lifecycle.

While it’s true that producing bottle-to-fiber polyester uses about 32% less energy (or up to 40–85% by some sources) than virgin polyester, bottle-to-fiber polyester short-circuits a bottle’s recyclability and actually leads it to end up in a landfill sooner.

As with everything, there are trade-offs. Things get murky when we use “made with recycled plastic” as a shorthand for “sustainable.” The same goes for carbon offsets. We might feel better about a purchase because a company tells us that the impact of production and shipping will be neutralized, but the reality is that carbon offsets are difficult to measure and typically don’t work…

Individual and collective action

In the last few years, aesthetically-driven home composting machines have grown in popularity. While food waste contributes to 8–10% of total greenhouse gas emissions, what’s often overlooked is that the majority of that waste happens before food hits consumer homes. Most waste happens on farms, in processing, and at grocery stores and restaurants.

Mill and Lomi aren’t the only home composting machines on the market, but they’re certainly the buzziest. Helen Rosner documented her experience testing them in the New Yorker and, unsurprisingly, arrived at an incisive conclusion (emphasis mine):

“And yet there was something nice about it all, about this pleasant little illusion in which I, a twenty-first-century city dweller, could participate in a virtuous cycle of responsible consumption, if only I bought the right machines…. What a person gets from using the Mill machine, the Lomi, the FoodCycler, and their cohort is, in contrast, just a feeling: the pleasurable, bourgeois satisfaction of having done the right thing without working too terribly hard at it. Food-waste processors neatly produce lighter-weight, lighter-footprint waste, but that’s not their primary purpose: they are machines for the efficient alleviation of guilt.”

Yes, individuals generate food waste at home. Yes, composting is an effective means of reducing the harm of that food waste. While individual and family-level solutions aren’t bad, they offer an individual solution to a systemic problem. We need scalable community- and industry-level solutions instead.

Climate-washing and climate wellness

The concept of climate-washing as a more specific form of greenwashing has been simmering in the back of my mind for a while. More specifically, I’ve been toying with the idea of climate as a new facet of wellness. Marketing that preys on insecurities is nothing new, but climate wellness appears to be different in that it taps into systemic insecurities in addition to individual fears.

I see climate wellness as a combination of the impact of one’s actions and, more interestingly, how likely someone is to be affected by climate change. Habitable Living mapping homeowners’ climate risks and Zillow including climate risks on real estate listings are expressions of this.

While it makes sense that homeowners would want to understand their climate-related risks for both insurance and safety reasons, suggesting that weather-related destruction can be avoided with proper research is patently false. Low risk doesn’t mean you’re safe, it just means you haven’t been directly affected yet (the 2023 Vermont floods are a prime example).

I live in Gowanus, Brooklyn, a neighborhood that surrounds one of the most heavily polluted bodies of water in the country. It was named a Superfund site in 2009 and clean-up efforts have been underway for over a decade. The canal experiences waves of combined sewer overflow, or “poonamis,” after moderate rainfall. Flooding is common.

The area around the canal was rezoned in 2021, opening the doors for residential development. An estimated 8,500 new apartments are being built.

Some of the new buildings have installations commemorating Hurricane Sandy, with placards to mark how high the water rose (12 feet) and QR codes linking to firsthand accounts from locals. The damage feels abstract, both because it’s been so long and so much has changed. But there’s something deeply sinister about honoring a climate disaster at the base of a luxury building when it’s only a matter of time before the canal floods another 12 feet.

I hope the people moving into these buildings take time to learn about the canal and its history, and I hope that developers aren’t downplaying the risks or leading people to believe that the canal redevelopment has eliminated all flood risk.

Most marketing scratches at insecurities and fears, telling us that purchasing the “right” thing is good and therefore means that we are good. The more we can interrogate this premise and ask ourselves who benefits, the better. We need informed decisions and a realistic understanding of individual versus collective responsibility. There’s no perfect option, just what’s right for you given your priorities and needs.

Still hungry?

• Rina Raphael’s 2023 exploration into sciencewashing feels relevant here.

Real Dip 🛒

Sage and pistachio pesto à la Botanica

Add a couple of large handfuls of pistachios, half a preserved lemon (seeds removed, if you can), a bunch of parsley, a pinch of salt, and some pepper flakes to a food processor.

Blitz it for a few seconds. Add two or three smashed cloves of garlic and about a dozen sage leaves and blitz again. Scrape down the sides, then drizzle in olive oil as the food processor runs.

Pairs well with roasted potatoes, Rancho Gordo’s Royal Corona beans, and fried bread.

Thanks for snacking,

— Emily 💫

PS: My phone line is open and I have room for new clients! Schedule a call with me and see how we might be able to work together.