Is anybody up to an environmental discussion about panties?

[Cleita]

I was talking with my stepdaughter about various clothing items including underwear yesterday and she brought up the fact that some of the women she works with don't wash their panties but throw them away and buy new ones. I mean these aren't deliberately supposed to be disposable panties but made of various fibers including polyester and cotton mixes or other underwear type fabrics that are intended to be washed and worn again.

The reason they do it is because they are so cheap to buy in packages like at Wal-Mart and other "chinese" retail stores that it's soooo easy to throw them away after they have been worn and need laundering. This started me thinking about the whole waste factor. First we have poor and hungry people working in factories in third world countries producing the fabrics and stitching up the knickers for consumption by American women who seem to have too much disposable income to take the trouble to do the laundry at least once a week.

Of course those factories probably are causing pollution and the workers are being exploited to produce these cheap items. Of course the more panties that are thrown away, the more will be purchased and that's got to be a good business situation for the factory owners and retail stores. Money, money, money. Who cares if those dirty bitches don't wash their underwear. Now, over here, the ladies are filling up landfills with mostly polyester that will be with us for a long time before it deteriorates. I think the human rights and pollution factors have to be obvious here.

I don't have a solution except to shame these women into doing their laundry and wearing these unmentionables until at least the elastic gives out. As far as men are concerned, I'm sure they do the same thing, but since many guys just wear the same thing over and over again until it falls off, I don't they they are polluting the landfills as much.

[phantom power]

1. I'm a bit shocked. Washing underwear isn't exactly a major chore.

[eleny]

2. Wow, sounds like they don't wash them before they wear them

I launder everything before we wear. So then, what's the difference? Might as well keep washing.

This kind of consumerism goes against my grain on the levels of safety and wastefulness.

[Cleita]

7. I wash clothes I buy first too before I wear them because they

are handled by so many people. But a lot of the panties, especially the cheap ones, come wrapped in plastic packages of five or seven and seem like they could be sanitary as they were wrapped in the factory.

[damntexdem]

13. Yeah, sanitary, and full of what chemicals?

Washing before wearing just makes sense.

[eleny]

18. I figure there are chemicals in clothing, towels and such

I know what you mean by the packages with a bunch. I toss them all in. Do it, Cleita. Panties are worn on a sensitive place and we don't know what kind of chemicals are used in the manufacturing process.

[LaurenG]

3. Wow Cleita, I've never heard of that

I was raised by depression era parents and we were made to make things last or go without.

I've noticed that many people don't cook homemade food anymore but throwing away good undies is wrong, my dust cloths are old undies and T shirts. :hi:

[Cleita]

9. Me too. I wear them until they are worn out, even the cheap ones,

and they find new life in my housekeeping and gardening tools.

[Sequoia]

4. I knew a guy who'd throw away shirts if he lost a button.

Not even give it to the Salvation Army. I yelled at him about it and the next time I saw him, about 3 months down the road, he told me he'd learned to sew buttons and didn't throw away shirts anymore because I made him feel so guily and wasteful.

[Cleita]

15. I have been known to throw away stuff because I

don't want to repair ripped seams or sew on buttons, but I do give them away to the Salvation Army or Goodwill to be worn again by someone. I can't imagine throwing away a perfectly good shirt with a missing button in the trash. We really don't understand what it's like not to be able to get a shirt to replace it.

[Donnachaidh]

5. if they don't wash their panties -- what OTHER things are they not washing?

Sorry, but it was the first thing that jumped into my head. :puke:

Doesn't really surprise me though. We're being brainwashed into being the laziest people on the planet. And those cheap panties would probably fall apart after a washing or two. And jeans are fashionable IF they look like you've slept in a mudpit for a week or three. Or ripped them off from a homeless person.

ICK. period.

[Redstone]

8. Ick, indeed. Excellent post, there. Well-said.

Redstone

[Cleita]

12. I buy those cheap panties and they actually hold up to a lot

of washings. I only need to replace them once a year. They then get recycled into rags for housekeeping and gardening. I could spend more on my knickers so I think we really need excise taxes on those imports to encourage domestic production like we used to have that also created union jobs here. Sure our fruit of the looms cost more back then, but we were filling landfills less and keeping people employed here.

[Redstone]

6. Yet another argument in support of my contention that the majority of Americans

are selfish and lazy.

Good God, I thought your subject line might have been a joke, but if what you're describing is indeed widespread, it's disgraceful.

Redstone

[NV Whino]

10. Who can resist a headline like that?

:rofl:

But seriously show them the Chinese flip flop photos from Wal-Mart. That should get their knickers in a twist and washing them besides.

It's really hard to understand the mentality of someone buying packages of cheap panties and then throwing them away after one wearing.

[damntexdem]

11. This is not about panties, it's about idiots.

It's not just waste, which is bad enough. It's not washing underwear BEFORE wearing it.

[aquart]

14. They WHAT?

Is that the definition of lazy?

[bananas]

16. They could sell them on the internet

Save the planet and make money.

[Cleita]

17. Eh, let's hope they wash them first.

I can't see non-perverts wanting to buy used and unwashed knickers.

[pscot]

19. I believe the fact that the garment is unwashed

is an essential element of its appeal.

[NNadir]

20. If the panties are cotton, they are a great way to sequester carbon.

In fact it's not always perfectly clear (or perfectly sudsy) about the external cost of washing things. I would suspect that life cycle analysis of transporting laundry water from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles might not be unambiguous.

Personally, as part of my commitment to the environment, I am wearing the same underwear and the same socks as I put on in 1976 when I first started reading Amory Lovins articles about conservation in Foreign Affairs.

After 15 years, they became ossified and now can be wiped with a dirty damp sponge wet with rain water.

[Dogmudgeon]

21. Panties can be an excellent source of renewable energy

With a skilled panty technician, a self-sustaining male energetic reaction can occur with a renewability cycle period of 15-60 minutes. The female reaction is typically continuous and can be intensified by the presence of precious metals (Au-79 or Ag-47), botanical products (such as Rosa multiflora), or sufficient financing.

Millions of such natural reactors exist in vivo. The reactor can be upgraded to pass a government inspection, a process called marriage, but the intensity of the reaction is usually paradoxically diminished, if prolonged.

Children should be shielded from all such reactions by three feet of lead, a closed door, or Nickelodeon. According to anecdotal data, those children who do witness it often become criminals, deny the existence of God, embrace Communism, and take drugs, although recent experiments indicate that boredom and derision are the normal responses among the pre-pubescent.

--p!

[Bamboo]

22. Not everybody does it,but everybody should.

Formaldehyde is a chemical used to disinfect fabric before shipping overseas.A sheet set I bought stunk up the room with the smell.I used to spray Dursban (nerve agent insecticide) on my lawn and afterward my fingers went tingly which relieved the boredom.Sisters are doing it for themselves,girls in the third world are sewing underwear for women in the first world.

I have been comparing religion and environmentalism and the similarities are striking.Carbon offsets seems like Catholic indulgences and hypocritical clergy do what I say not what I do.In the past tribes did not need a pope or a central bank they operated at the right level.We are developing a global religion for the next level but some will still practice cargo cults.Toxins are evil spirits in the global religion so impurities in the atmosphere or panties require an exorcist.


http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/formaldehyde

[kestrel91316]

23. I'm the opposite of these shameful wastrels. I HANDWASH my

undies. You heard that right, sportsfans. HANDWASH. In the sink. With my homemade laundry soap. And hang them to drip dry on my wooden dryer rack from Lehman's.

I know this will give lots of you an attack of the vapors, but guess what? THEY LAST ALMOST FOREVER. The washer and especially the dryer are terribly hard on them, particularly the elastic.

I'm not afraid of "germs" from my undies, either. I have a degree in microbiology and so I have a logical perspective on what germs to fear and what to ignore.

[losthills]

24. I am in favor

of Solar Panties only....