Catching up on this thread. Plastics reduction & plastic shopping bags took up several pages here. I am looking forward to the day when I can bring own bags into the stores again, although maybe I can and haven't realized it yet because I'm still watching out for mask wearing and haven't seen anyone bringing in their own bags yet. And the store that used to require bringing your own bags, has closed so I don't even have that as a gauge anymore.
I spent most of my life in California, having been born & raised there. The plastics bag bans began to slowly spread from town to town; not all towns banned them; it took some time to get to be a state-wide thing. We moved here in 2005 and only one store required bring your own bags (Aldi - yay! - but sad, they left.) In my travels of the United States, the plastics bags ban as well as the cost or no-added cost of bags was more of a local municipal rule or mandate than a state-wide mandate. Stores that charged for plastic bags also charged for paper bags. I tend to ask for paper unless I have run low on garbage bags to line my kitchen garbage can with. But for the most part, I prefer to bring my own bags, and fill them myself. I really do not like the way most baggers put my groceries into the bags. They tend to be sloppy and seem to have no sense of how to properly bag so as to cause not damage to the things in the bottom of the bag.
I was so disappointed when the stores refused to allow us to bring our own bags during CoVid lockdown; the rationale was that it created more work for them to clean the check-out area if our bags contaminated the bagging area (even in the self-checkout stations.)
I was shocked to see mention of Costco touching bags. I have yet to shop in a Costco that bags any purchase (oh, well except in the Pharmacy area, and maybe the other non-grocery areas inside a Costco) and I have shopped at Costcos in several states.
But aside from that, yes we (the US) are making small strides to reduce packaging, but it really depends on the manufacturer, locale and customer base. I don't think legislators at the national level seem to care all that much, for the most part anyway. The collective mindset just isn't there yet. I've seen more progress in some states than others, of course and that makes me hopeful.
But also I find issue with the labeling of plastic as a "single-use" thing. That is not necessarily true. I re-use all of my plastics, multiple times. When I buy bottled water (like when I travel, for example), I re-use those bottles until they just can't be used anymore. I wash them between use and re-fill with filtered water and drink from them in an ongoing effort to not waste plastic. I only just recently purchased a metal bottle with a screw-on top because some of my plastic drinking bottles have deteriorated enough that I have to put one into the recycle bin. I stopped using my straw-inserted metal cup because I kept knocking it over and spilling my drinks on stuff. I also re-use plastic baggies. Rarely is a plastic baggy a 'single-use' item in my household. I wash them, sanitize them, hang them to dry & re-use them indefinitely. I've been doing this for at least 2 or 3 decades now. Even plastic wrap is re-usable as for example, when I cut an onion and wrap it in Saran wrap, I use that same piece of plastic to re-wrap the onion the next several times I cut a bit off the onion until the onion is entirely used up. Same with a brick of cheese; same piece of plastic wrap used until the brick of cheese is all gone. The only time I would not re-use plastic wrap is if I wrapped meat in it, which I rarely do since I don't eat meat anyway. But if I do wrap meat for my husband to eat later, that plastic does get tossed after a single use.
As far as soapy things, I moved soap while doing housework. Major clean-up going on here the past few days. I moved two of my soap cutters to a new location where they may stay for awhile. I am undecided, but they are easier access now. In the process of moving things around to create better access, I spilled some infused almond oil and had big spot of oil on my front yesterday and didn't realize it for several hours. It looked like a breastfeeding leak; ladies you know what I'm talking about. At least it was a cheap camisole that I had also noticed had a hole in it, so not one of my more prized tops; so if the PS 80 doesn't get rid of the huge oil stain, I won't be too upset. I can always cut it up & use it to polish furniture, another thing I've been doing this week. With Hubby gone for 5 days, I was able to clear my lovely wooden table and oil the wood to a fine sheen.
Okay, that's enough out of me. I want to make soap, but I have to finish applyng oil to the wooden dining room chairs so it can all soak in before Hubby comes back home on Monday. And other housework. But I do want to make soap sometime today or tomorrow; just haven't set it as a priority yet; I have to wait and find out if my injured hand (I fell yesterday and my hand is swollen and painful) can handle the kinds of actions soapmaking entails. I can lift my water bottle, but I can't comfortably pour water from a pitcher into the water bottle using my right hand to pour the water. I can carry an empty soap mold with some caution, but not confident that's going to cut it if I do make soap, so more evaluation of what I can manage is needed.
I spent most of my life in California, having been born & raised there. The plastics bag bans began to slowly spread from town to town; not all towns banned them; it took some time to get to be a state-wide thing. We moved here in 2005 and only one store required bring your own bags (Aldi - yay! - but sad, they left.) In my travels of the United States, the plastics bags ban as well as the cost or no-added cost of bags was more of a local municipal rule or mandate than a state-wide mandate. Stores that charged for plastic bags also charged for paper bags. I tend to ask for paper unless I have run low on garbage bags to line my kitchen garbage can with. But for the most part, I prefer to bring my own bags, and fill them myself. I really do not like the way most baggers put my groceries into the bags. They tend to be sloppy and seem to have no sense of how to properly bag so as to cause not damage to the things in the bottom of the bag.
I was so disappointed when the stores refused to allow us to bring our own bags during CoVid lockdown; the rationale was that it created more work for them to clean the check-out area if our bags contaminated the bagging area (even in the self-checkout stations.)
I was shocked to see mention of Costco touching bags. I have yet to shop in a Costco that bags any purchase (oh, well except in the Pharmacy area, and maybe the other non-grocery areas inside a Costco) and I have shopped at Costcos in several states.
But aside from that, yes we (the US) are making small strides to reduce packaging, but it really depends on the manufacturer, locale and customer base. I don't think legislators at the national level seem to care all that much, for the most part anyway. The collective mindset just isn't there yet. I've seen more progress in some states than others, of course and that makes me hopeful.
But also I find issue with the labeling of plastic as a "single-use" thing. That is not necessarily true. I re-use all of my plastics, multiple times. When I buy bottled water (like when I travel, for example), I re-use those bottles until they just can't be used anymore. I wash them between use and re-fill with filtered water and drink from them in an ongoing effort to not waste plastic. I only just recently purchased a metal bottle with a screw-on top because some of my plastic drinking bottles have deteriorated enough that I have to put one into the recycle bin. I stopped using my straw-inserted metal cup because I kept knocking it over and spilling my drinks on stuff. I also re-use plastic baggies. Rarely is a plastic baggy a 'single-use' item in my household. I wash them, sanitize them, hang them to dry & re-use them indefinitely. I've been doing this for at least 2 or 3 decades now. Even plastic wrap is re-usable as for example, when I cut an onion and wrap it in Saran wrap, I use that same piece of plastic to re-wrap the onion the next several times I cut a bit off the onion until the onion is entirely used up. Same with a brick of cheese; same piece of plastic wrap used until the brick of cheese is all gone. The only time I would not re-use plastic wrap is if I wrapped meat in it, which I rarely do since I don't eat meat anyway. But if I do wrap meat for my husband to eat later, that plastic does get tossed after a single use.
As far as soapy things, I moved soap while doing housework. Major clean-up going on here the past few days. I moved two of my soap cutters to a new location where they may stay for awhile. I am undecided, but they are easier access now. In the process of moving things around to create better access, I spilled some infused almond oil and had big spot of oil on my front yesterday and didn't realize it for several hours. It looked like a breastfeeding leak; ladies you know what I'm talking about. At least it was a cheap camisole that I had also noticed had a hole in it, so not one of my more prized tops; so if the PS 80 doesn't get rid of the huge oil stain, I won't be too upset. I can always cut it up & use it to polish furniture, another thing I've been doing this week. With Hubby gone for 5 days, I was able to clear my lovely wooden table and oil the wood to a fine sheen.
Okay, that's enough out of me. I want to make soap, but I have to finish applyng oil to the wooden dining room chairs so it can all soak in before Hubby comes back home on Monday. And other housework. But I do want to make soap sometime today or tomorrow; just haven't set it as a priority yet; I have to wait and find out if my injured hand (I fell yesterday and my hand is swollen and painful) can handle the kinds of actions soapmaking entails. I can lift my water bottle, but I can't comfortably pour water from a pitcher into the water bottle using my right hand to pour the water. I can carry an empty soap mold with some caution, but not confident that's going to cut it if I do make soap, so more evaluation of what I can manage is needed.
I am not sure of the effect of these salts on my soap but I wonder if they contributed to trouble I was having with soda ash.
… anyhow, I swapped regular palm oil for palm stearin in my work-in-progress M&P recipe, and the final result is already noticeably harder than the last times, a mere few hours after saponification.
, weren't there the magnesium. I don't know by own experiments what to expect from added Mg, but I'd guess your lye solution is turbid? In the soap batter, Mg then would combine with fatty acid anions to form soap scum, that might clump into something similar to soda ash. In any case, the additions will eat up some lye, and impair SAP precision.
