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SHAINA IN COLORADO ASKS:
What did our great-grandparents and grandparents do for food storage, washing, and cleaning? Our ancestors once lived without single-use plastics and survived well and healthy. As a Tribal member of the Navajo Nation, my mother shared how they would use yucca root for cleansing her hair and body. I know we all have a parent or grandparent that shared their survival knowledge and experience in a world that knew nothing of waste and overconsumption. What’s your family’s survival experience that we could all use to combat the climate crisis and protect our children’s health?
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MOM DETECTIVE ANSWERS:
Hi, Shaina. Thank you for this beautiful query—a conversation starter, truly. You are so right that previous generations as recent as our grandmothers and grandfathers lived well without plastic and an overabundance of stuff. When I first became interested in sustainability 20 years ago, I did ask my maternal grandmother, then still alive, about what people historically used for modern items like cleaning products full of toxic chemicals that can pollute our air and harm our children’s health. She wasn’t interested in sustainability as I defined it, but her generation cleaned glass and mirrors, for example, with vinegar and water—both edible—and wiped with already-read newspapers, not paper towels. So sustainable!
Over the years, I’ve done some research about historical food storage, as well as cleaners and laundry. Here’s a little of what I’ve learned. I have intentionally returned to many of these simple waste-free ways in my own life. They make sense to me, and I hope they will to more people too.
Food storage
I’m going to oversimplify here, so please forgive my loose timeline! Historically people used to eat what they gathered or hunted. Food storage wasn’t really a thing. As time went on, people invented a variety of ways to save fish, meat, and cultivated crops for later use, including but not limited to canning, fermentation (pickling), dehydrating, smoking, sun-drying, salt packing, storing in oil, root cellars, and so on. The history of food packaging fascinates me. Well before plastic, people used natural containers like shells, leaves, gourds, hollowed logs, natural grasses woven into baskets, and even animal organs. Eventually humans made early versions of paper and fabric, which improved over time. Metal came into use as well. Plastic wasn’t made until the 19th century, and it wasn’t used much for food storage at first.
My own parents have memories of bringing lunch to school in metal boxes and the occasional brown paper bag in the 1940s and ’50s. My mom’s sandwiches were usually wrapped in wax paper. Both of them had glass bottle milk delivery. Empties were placed in wooden boxes outside their homes and picked up by the milkman for reuse when he arrived with new bottles. My dad says soda and juices also came in glass containers. All of this indicates there was less plastic in production than today—which also means less plastic chemicals in our air and water, less petrochemicals polluting communities near plastic manufacturing facilities, and less plastic chemicals leaching into food from storage containers. I yearn for my parents’ lunches.
Plastics are everywhere today, and production is expected to triple over the next 40 years. The creation of plastics will contribute up to 19% of global climate pollution by 2040. And chemicals in plastics have been linked to a range of health issues, including neurodevelopmental disorders, asthma, allergies, reproductive harm, endocrine disruption, and cancer.
Laundry
Before modern laundry detergent, which is typically filled with toxic chemicals not listed on labels, including synthetic fragrance, whitening agents, and optical brighteners, people cleaned clothing in a variety of ways. Certainly there was no such thing as scented fabric softeners. There was also far less clothing, as fast fashion had yet to be invented. What was used as detergent depends on how far back in history you go. In Roman times, people even collected and used urine (human and animal) as it contains ammonia! Also used: ashes, clay, sand, and methods like beating, scrubbing, pounding, and soaking—possibly even in a river. (If you’ve heard of lye, it was originally made of wood ashes from fires, water, and then filtered through something like gravel or sand. It’s caustic and can burn skin.) And as you mentioned, there are plants that people discovered make lather so were employed as “soap,” including yucca root, which is sometimes called soap weed. Sunlight was—and still is—considered a disinfectant and a brightening agent. Line drying was the only option. It all did the trick.
Early soap was made of animal fats and oils and was used to get dirt out of clothing for many years—centuries, even. By some estimates, soap was invented in 2800 BC! My dad remembers boxes of soap flakes that went in the washing machine. More powerful synthetic detergents were developed in the early 20th century, and liquid detergents became trendy in the mid 20th century. Around this time, a strong belief in “better living through chemistry” took root in the United States—and elsewhere. Manufacturers have been creating products that promise more and more cleaning power, scent, and efficacy through potentially harmful, synthetic, mostly petroleum-derived chemicals ever since. Thankfully, with growing awareness of conventional detergent’s potential harms to humans, aquatic life, and waterways, there are safer laundry alternatives on the market too. You can even buy soap nuts, which are dried shells of the soapberry nut that contain saponin, a natural surfactant.
Cleaning
Unless someone in your house is immunocompromised or there has been a flu going around, you don’t need more than water and soap to clean. Antibacterial agents, harsh cleaners, and anything full of potentially harmful chemicals just aren’t necessary. Think about it, soap and water is effective for handwashing, so why not door knobs, floors, and more? Along with soap and water, I use vinegar, lemon, baking soda, and hydrogen peroxide. From these household staples, there’s nothing you can’t clean. To learn how to mix these ingredients together to make, say, tub scrub, there are no end of “recipes” online or invest in a copy of Better Basics for the Home: Simple Solutions for Less Toxic Living. I’ve had my dog-eared copy for well over a decade. I think of it as the sustainable grandmother I never had, in book form.
Shaina, modernism has good points, of course. But today we all have daily products in our homes that are polluting our indoor air and aren’t entirely safe to have around our growing children. Taking a moment to remember that our ancestors did absolutely live well without single-use plastic and harsh chemical cleaners should be a wake-up call. I’m not interested in returning to using animal organs to pack school lunch, but I’m happy to use shatterproof glass and reusable stainless steel tiffins. And like generations before me, I don’t overdo it with cleaners or detergents at home. My grandparents knew a thing or two, it turns out. Vinegar and water for the win!
Tell Congress: Hold the Line on Progress to Cut Climate Pollution