I’ve Got Just One Word For You, Just One Word – Plastics
Back in the late 1980s, we were told to switch from paper bags to plastic bags because it was “better for the environment.” In retrospect, that was one of the stupidest societal decisions ever, at least in my view.
Tell me, what is plastic made of? Does it come from the plastic fairy? Does it come from some renewable source? If you answered yes, you are wrong. Plastics are made from petroleum. You know, that terrible stuff that comes from the ground that is routinely blamed for all of our environmental problems. Plastic is petroleum.
This is what we were told we should switch to. Even more, this is what we were forced to switch to. “Paper or plastic?” was a question that only lasted at supermarkets for about five to ten years. Now, EVERYTHING is plastic-you don’t get a choice.
It’s all about “saving the environment,” right?
But what about paper? Do you even remember the reason we aren’t supposed to use paper? Wasn’t it that “using paper causes trees to be cut down,” or something along those lines? Yeah, I think it was. Back then, we were all so worried about using a renewable resource like wood, so we switched to using a non-renewable resource-oil-instead. Wow, how smart we were.
It’s time to get real. It’s time to re-evaluate environmentalism. It’s time to re-evaluate claims and beliefs that have simply passed unchecked into our culture. Paper bags at the grocery store aren’t even an option anymore, for crying out loud.
The next time you drink a Diet Coke out of a plastic bottle, ask yourself, “What will happen to this bottle once I’m finished with it?” The answer is either it gets recycled in processing plants (that themselves pollute the air) or it gets thrown into a landfill where it will take many, many, MANY years to degrade. Then ask yourself, “What if I’d drank this Diet Coke out of a glass bottle?” The answer is either it would have gotten cleaned and used again (without having to go through a polluting chemical process) or it would have ended up in the same landfill.
Ask yourself similar questions every time you use a plastic bag rather than a paper one. Yes, that plastic bag can be recycled in a processing plant, but a paper bag could just as easily been as well. Plus, paper comes from a renewable resource: trees that can be replanted.
It goes without saying that a move back to wood and glass would help lighten our use of oil. Isn’t that something that everybody wants?
Environmental fads are worse than fashion or language fads; once they set in they seem to stay set in even after they no longer make sense. With fashion fads, the silly bell-bottoms get thrown in the closet and forgotten-they do no one any more harm. With language fads, we simply stop calling everything “far out,” “radical,” or “hella.”
But with environmental fads, we end up radically changing the culture and lifestyle. Bad fads don’t just get discarded into the closet with our jellies. No, they degrade even slower than plastics.
And, years down the line, our children (by whom we justify our environmental fads) will ask, “Why did you switch to non-renewable resources when you could have kept using renewable resources? What were you thinking?”
And we will shove our hands into the pockets of our bell-bottoms and reply, “Shucks, we didn’t know that plastics would be so hella-bad for the environment, dude.”
God forgive us for how misguided we are.
July 02 2008 03:14 am | Environment
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