Happy Earth Day, one and all. I wonder if this year’s Earth Day is apt to be more successful than others, with the current fad of being “green”. I wonder if the green movement will grow and prosper and lead to real change, or whether it will prove to be a momentary blip, the “Green Generation” fading away just like the Yuppies. Of course, one seems to be the antithesis of the other.
Anyway. There’s something that’s been bugging me for some time, and today seems a good day to get it off my chest.
Plastic.
I don’t know when it happened, but plastic has taken over our lives, much the same way gasoline has. I know little about plastic other than the fact that it is made primarily of petroleum.
Now it seems to me that the ubiquitous plastic products we have inundated ourselves with are going to get more and more expensive as oil becomes more expensive. And it seems like common sense to think that we’re just depleting the limited oil resources even faster with our addiction to plastic.
Of course, plastics can be recycled — but it is difficult and expensive, especially when the plastics are small parts, and much of time it is not economically worth it.
The thing that got me thinking about this is not the plastics in items like computers or televisions or bottles of Windex; no, it is the plastic that has been grafted on to things that didn’t use to have it and don’t need it. For instance, have you noticed that you can no longer find cartons of milk, juice, egg substitute, or anything else that used to come in a plain paper carton, without a small plastic spout added to it? Not only does it have a spout and a cap, but also a little disposable plastic insert that you pull out and throw away. What was wrong with opening the side of the paper carton to form a spout, as we did for much of the 20th century?
What about bottles of soda? Used to be glass, now plastic.
I look around my house and see so many things that have morphed into plastic versions of their former selves. Venetian blinds. Crown moulding. Curtains. Picture frames. Shoes. Clothing. Flowers.
Every so often people complain about styrofoam or plastic; remember when you used to be asked “paper or plastic?” at the grocery store? It’s been years since I heard that. Now it’s plastic or nothing. (I carry reusable recycled shopping bags when I go to the store, less plastic and they carry more.) Conversely, remember when everything at McDonald’s came in a styrofoam box? After environmentalists complained, McDonald’s switched to paper boxes; I don’t know if they cost more to manufacture and ship, and whether it was simply a PR ploy, but that one act certainly must have done away with a huge amount of plastic pollution. (And substituted paper pollution.)
Anyway. I haven’t given this subject a lot of deep thought, obviously, but I wish I could lead a less plastic-intensive lifestyle, especially when it comes to disposable items like food packaging. I guess I could start shopping at Zanotto’s hyper-expensive market up the road when they charge $14 for two chicken breasts, but wrap it in wax paper instead of styrofoam and plastic wrap…
