WE FILL up our gas tanks with a derivative of it, but are you aware of just how many things that oil is used to make?

Don’t have a car and don’t use heating oil to heat your house?  Doesn’t matter… no matter who you are in Western Civilization, you use or consume something chocked full of oil.

And I’m not talking cold pressed, double virgin olive oil from Greece.  I’m talking the gunky, black crude from the Middle East, or – closer at hand if in America – that stuff seeping in the Gulf of Mexico.

Yes, it’s the Gulf Oil Spill that inspires this post.  The intent is to suggest how pervasive and unhealthy has been the petrol-chemical way of life that we are leading.

Here’s a small list of things in which oil is an important ingredient:

1. All plastics

(here’s an eye-opener!)

2. Nylon, as in women’s stockings
3. Aspirin (petrochemicals are the active ingredients)
4. Perfume
5. Personal lubricants
6. Candles
7. Food additives
8. Detergent
9. Golf balls

There’s a brief description of the petrol in each of these items here.

The good news is, that you don’t hafta use any of this stuff.. there are substitutes (well, maybe not for golf balls).  So, perhaps you feel unable to reduce your use of your car, but perhaps you can take a small step in the right direction by finding alternatives to the other products seeped in oil.

Yep.

P.S. Wanna contemplate doing some more useful stuff for better living on a better planet? Check out 7 Things to do for Momma Earth.

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1. Water Bottle Alternatives You Can Live With

Tagged as: oil, petro-chemicals, plastic

Published on May 11, 2010