This is the catch from my bike trawl home from Marin Power Yoga yesterday. These are the pieces of plastic I took the time to stop to pick up, again, not the most expedient way to commute.
Hey, guess what dryer sheets are made of?
It really hadn't occurred to me until I passed the one you see in the picture, and then turned my bike back around to pick it up. Besides the fact that it is indeed made of polyester (thus existing forever, hooray), I noticed that the smell from it gave me an instant headache.
The chemicals in it, and so many common household products are another can of worms altogether, but I will say, as a kid raised on Tide, Downey, Windex, Lysol, Clorox, Comet, Bounce, the whole lot - once you switch away from them and allow your body to begin to clear out those chemicals and toxins, you'll never be able to tolerate them again.
In a way, it reminds me of how the people least tolerant of second hand smoke, are often former smokers - can you imagine being on a plane with a smoking section nowadays? Hard to believe that used to be a thing.
Seventh Generation dryer sheets are made of paper, and thus compostable. According to their website:
"If every household in the U.S. replaced just one box of polyester fabric softener sheets with our paper sheets, and composted after use, we could prevent 7,400 tons of solid waste from entering our landfills."
There are a variety of options available for anyone wanting to ditch the plastic version, as well as to avoid the chemical exposure - It's a win-win, or at least a respectable step in a better direction.