Wednesday, November 25, 2009

In praise of rubber gloves

Not feeling very inspired lately so nothing special to show you on here, but there are things in the works. Actually, some secret things have been occupying my time, so can't show those! But I did catch sight of a cute video that I wanted to pass along to you, involving a breast cancer awareness promotion and a product that was indispensable to me for many years: rubber gloves! During my nursing career, the lowly rubber glove transitioned from being unnecessary to vital. Can't even imagine how many gloves I went through during those years, but here's a guess. Maybe in a typical hour of patient care, I would put on and discard 10 pairs. Never really counted, but we'll just use that number. Sometimes more, sometimes less. So in a 12 hour shift, that's 120 pairs! That's not too far out of line, because I think that they are usually packed in a box of 100 and I could definitely see using a box/shift. So if I work 3 shifts a week (typically) and 50 weeks in a year (gotta take a vacation sometime!) that makes 18,000 pairs (36,000 single gloves) in a year. In just 10 years' time, that's 360,000 gloves! Whoa! Wish I had invested in one of those companies about 30 years ago when gloves were just a nuisance and not required for every little task! And what landfill are they living in now??? Don't want to go there!
Taking off tomorrow AM to drive down to Iowa (God's country) for Thanksgiving with the family and a special birthday for my mom (80!!!). I'll have a turkey report coming your way!

1 comment:

MissesStitches said...

That's an amazing number of gloves you've used in your career! And yes, it's scary to think of the landfill they are in now.