The Renewable Razor

"When will somebody invent the renewable razor?"

I think this as I examine the single-blade Bic I have in my right hand to accompany the handful of shaving lather in my left. As I think this, the cold water of the faucet continues down the drain at a rapid pace. It is cold not hot because, although it feels better on my face and makes the hairs of my beard stand on end, warm water makes the blade dull more quickly and I go through razors more rapidly.

I examine the plastic of the handle. It is orange and made of some thin and cheap polymer made of foreign oil and American blood. A whole pack of these things, 20 in all, was less than two dollars so I have no reason to believe great care was expended in lessening the environmental impact of its production. The same is surely true of the razorhead and although it is white I doubt that means it's any more Earth-friendly.

I look at the blade, a thin strip of indeterminate metal, steel possibly, custom-fit to the razorhead. Metals are rare molecules pressed together in the hot depths of our planet's molten core over thousands of years. Geological ages bringing atoms of iron together with oxygen and occasionally something else to form compounds like Fe304 and Fe2O3 or FeCO3 until some man, a human, tears it out of the Earth using strip mining or mountain top removal. Even then it must be smelted in a fossil fuel-burning blast furnace and cast into wide thin sheets before it can be trucked over road and possibly across the continent to the place where it meets the thin plastic held in my right hand.

I look at all of this and I think of the whole process required for me to remove hair from my face. I think of the natural world being ruined so I can have the convenience of a clean face and a nuzzle from my girlfriend. I think about this and I think "When will somebody invent the renewable razor?"

For me, I see hope in the destruction. I reject the bleakness of the end of the world. I imagine a future when there will be a blade that doesn't go dull or at least biodegrades when I am done with it. I imagine a handle made from natural materials not synthetics. I imagine these things, believe they will one day exist and return to shaving my face by rinsing my Bic in the cold stream flowing ebulliently from the bathroom faucet.