Shoot It To The Moon
It's time to find valid recycling options for plastic. What kind of world makes things that can't be disposed of? There’s a pretty little tree outside my house and it has a plastic bag hanging toward the top. I can’t get to it and it’s been there awhile, two years I think. Storms, wind, and time don’t seem to be doing anything helpful in the way of getting it down. So the bag’s got a grip on the tree and I have to wonder – will it be there in twenty years? Fifty years? Plastic bottles start breaking down after 700 years, but bags take a bit longer, 1000 years just to start the process.
Plastics come from petroleum, our favorite source of non-renewable fuel. How many strikes is it going to take for petroleum products to be banned? Oh wait, right, we can just wait until they run out naturally. The drastic far reaching dangers inherent in ignoring this problem are stupendous and plastic is the most visible symbol of it all. Extracting oil from the earth costs a fortune, takes a toll on the earth and the animals, affects earthquakes and assorted weather phenomena, and pollutes the air, the water, the earth. And now it has to take responsibility for the huge garbage pile of plastic the earth is becoming.
Nothing in this world moves through it without affecting everything else, in the same way a spider has to make a new home when I sweep his web away. In 1988 the Society of the Plastics Industry, Inc. (SPI) introduced its plastic recycling code system. This was done solely to aid recycling companies in categorizing their plastics, but what an eye-opener that list of codes was. Many plastics have a symbol code printed on them, they are1 through 7, surrounded by a triangle of arrows. Numbers 1, 2, and 6 are recyclable, 3, 4, and 5 have a low rate of recyclability, while 7 is not at all recyclable. Anything with no label is a 7. Earth911.com has some horrifying stats on plastic. I cringe to think of them. Bottled water recycling stats are only 23%, which means 77% of all the empties are just sitting in landfills. Plastic bags are worse, only 1-3% of them are recycled. More information can be found at http://www.thedailygreen.com/green-homes/latest/recycling-symbols-plastics-460321.
I suppose eventually we’ll just shoot the damned mess into outer space. Out of sight, out of mind they’ll say. And you know who they are. It’s a selfish society we live in, always out for number one and for money, no matter if it’s at the expense of the Earth. No poison is too strong; hell, we’ll just put the factory in another country, and the garbage dump. And don’t forget, we can always buy off a senator or two. That’s probably the point that bothers me most, the utter selfishness of mankind. We dig huge holes and don’t fill them, we dirty up the water and don’t clean it, and we make our damned stinking garbage indestructible.
It is so short-sighted that our society thinks nothing of the future; if we’re going to leave anything of value to our children it should be a clean and healthy earth. There’s a lack of civilization apparent in today’s philosophy, proving that our day to day mentality is barbaric. We’re allowed to use the earth; it’s been entrusted to us. It’s time to evolve into a civilized world and clean up every bit of the mess we’ve made and allowed others to make. That’s where the responsibility comes in; our society’s tolerance and knowledge of this destructive behavior is an outrage. And our action or inactions will have a grave influence on our Earth’s survival, which hopefully will lead to a new age of civilization. If Extraterrestrials are observing our progress to date, they must be aghast. I wonder if they’ve nicknamed Earth ‘The Dump’.
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Comments
i hope you are not wrapping
i hope you are not wrapping your brain with plastic...although maybe it woul take 1000years to degrade? What if we start eating plastic? Maybe we'll gain some longevity since "you are what you eat"...oh yeah...the cancer thingy...
Maybe evolution is our best shot!
Hmm, maybe you're onto something here, Cristele - could it be that the only hope is that we or another species will evolve to eat plastic? I wonder what would come out the other end in that case? I shudder to think!
I lamented about the state of this country's recycling when I made this video - please don't watch on full screen if you're prone to motion sickness!
It's definitely shortsightedness that's the core of the problem - we just like the convenience and don't give a hoot about the long-term consequences. Frankly, I don't think it's at all natural for humans to really even comprehend those kinds of long-term consequences. People in my town recycle in part because it's the law, and when you take a look at how well they separate the materials you can tell it's a halfhearted attempt. Whether it's the creation of non-recyclable packaging, or the lack of will to recycle what's already out there, changing the typical person's mindset isn't that easy. We always go for the short-term rewards.
For example, is it true that affluent Israelis have lawns? In the desert they have lawns? How shortsighted is that?
But I digress. Governments try, to some extent, to encourage recycling, but those attempts are likewise halfhearted. I think it has to be a genuine economic incentive for it to work. How much recycled materials do governments use themselves? If they swore off virgin material, wouldn't that make recycled materials a hotter economic commodity because there would be a big buyer? It would add companies to the market and reduce the price of recycling, making it more profitable to recycle than use new - they way it already is for aluminum.
As for plastic bags, well petroleum is a problem in many ways. Since we still need it for energy, it really seems shortsighted to make cheap bags out of the stuff. I'd certainly support a ban on using petroleum when it's not essential, and that might be the type of ban that could get support from different political perspectives, as well.
wake up
You know, no matter how often we hear those kind of stats about plastics degrading, it is still a huge shock when we hear them again - 1000 years!!! What are we thinking???
Thanks for a great post linhah.
Danielle Ali Shah
Wake up
Yeah, I have a lot of trouble wrapping my brain around 1000 years.
It IS time to evolve,
Do you need some help with the plastic bag on your tree ? :-)
Plastic bag in tree
Thank you, Aviad. We're going to be taking another stab at the tree during spring cleanup, with a long ladder. Personally I think it's going to take a cherry picker, but we'll see. I appreciate your offer and if we can't do it this time, I'll let you know.