Broadleaf (Plaintain) Backyard Bandaid

     In many parts of the world this plant is widely recognized. Plantago major's common names include broadleaf plantain, common plantain, ripple grass, white man's foot, and snakeweed to name a few, but other names also have meaning related to life. Where I live a lot of people would recognize it as a hardy weed that grows in between cracks and on lawns, and trails, and just about anywhere that is can pop up. Although not everyone appreciates broadleaf plantain's presence on the front lawn, it is sometimes selected for its elegant appearance with broad, symmetrical leaves and slender stalks growing out the middle. Matured leaves grow large and tough, and the parallel veins that run through them are strong.
     However, unbeknown to many who probably walk by them every day this plant has some practical applications. The young tender leaves make a nutritious salad containing vitamin C, and the leaves and seeds actually have medicinal properties. 
      It contains many different compounds with medicinal uses  such as:
(A more comprehensive list can be read at altnature.com in the sources)

• antibacterial
• astringent
• anti-inflammatory
• antiseptic
• laxative

     Perhaps one of the most simple (but still effective) uses of plantain is as a poultice. Applied and bound to open wounds, insect bites, splinters spots, or blisters, it can help aid in the healing process. 
     A poultice can be easily made by using a mortar and pestle (or spoon and plate if you don't have a mortar and pestle) to crush the leaves to a pulp which can be mixed with a small amount of water. Unless you are at home it is likely that you may not have a mortar and pestle available at the time of a bug bite while walking in the woods. It is always best to clean a wound first, but if plantain is available you can actually chew or bite on a leaf (without swallowing) so that the juices are excreted and use it on scrapes or insect bites.

Sources
Lone Pine Ontario Nature Guide by Krista Kagume
https://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/p/placom43.html 
http://www.altnature.com/gallery/plantain.htm

'PET Peeve' - Disposable Plastic Bottles

Roderick Chen / All Canada Photo / Universal Images Group

PET stands for polyethylene terephthalate, a type of plastic which can be identified by the recyclable symbol number '1'. It is typically used for single-use disposable water bottles which are extremely commonplace in many parts of the world such as North America.

Because PET plastic bottles are not only convenient but also recyclable, it can cause a consumer of water to question the validity of the claim that they are not 'eco-friendly'. However, there are problems associated with their use for ecosystems which also includes humans.

The Issues

Disposable water bottles generate massive amounts of waste every day around the world. In fact, the project 'Watershed' by MSLK, a graphic design firm in New York, estimates that about 1500 plastic bottles are used per second in the United States alone. It would take a lot of energy every day to recycle all these water bottles into other plastic products, however, although they can be recycled, only about 23% of the bottles used in the United States actually are recycled.

PET plastic will take a very long time to decompose, at an estimate of 700 years. Most plastic bottles are not recycled but instead sent to ever-growing landfills which have other associated issues such as land space, effects on local communities, and leaching into water sources.

Many plastic water bottles unintentionally end up polluting oceans. There is a landfill, similar to a plastic island, in the Pacific Ocean estimated to be about the size of Texas, composed mostly of plastic water bottles that the current accumulated. Small plastics such as the bottle caps (which cannot be recycled) also often end up harming wildlife directly, as animals such as sea birds accidentally ingest them or feed them to their young, mistaking it for food.

The solution lies in using reusable water bottles that can be refilled with tap water.

5 Reasons to Use Reusable Water Bottles (Instead of PET Plastic)

1. Reduce waste produced from thousands of water bottles disposed daily, and reduce the energy required to process the ones that get recycled.

2. Save money spent on hundreds of plastic water bottles by making the one-time purchase of a reusable one.

3. Prevent pollution and plastic bottles from accidentally ending up in bodies of water, and bottle caps from being ingested by wildlife.

4. Don’t support water being taken from communities to be used in bottled water sold to other places where water is already available through a tap. Some large bottling companies even continue to take water during periods of drought when water is scarce.

5. Avoid ingesting antimony. Although levels are low, it can leach into water from PET bottles increasing over time in storage, and can be easily avoided.

At a first glance one plastic water bottle is easy to dismiss as a small thing that has no real significance in the grand scheme of things, but they accumulate with such mass amounts. A person living in America may use an average of 167 disposable water bottles a year, but could replace all of them with just one reusable one, which is a small change that can go a long way.

If you are looking for information on what type of reusable bottle best fits your purposes, feel free to take a look at this older post that compares two different types of reusable water bottles.

Sources

banthebottle.net

http://www.factsonpet.com/frequently-asked-questions/

http://stopnestlewaters.org/about

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17396641

http://www.treehugger.com/clean-water/the-us-consumes-1500-plastic-water-bottles-every-second-a-fact-by-watershed.html

http://action.sumofus.org/a/nestle-water-ontario/4/2/?sub=homepage