Welcome To Our Kingdom Of Plastic

Walk into any one of your favorite stores or supercenters and you will notice that plastic surrounds you.  Starting with the signs that greet you, the displays in the middle of the aisle, hell, even the shopping carts are plastic now!   Everywhere you look there is plastic in one form or another, there is no escaping it.  We have become so desensitized to it that we no longer realize just how prevalent it is in our society.

Recent news reports have shown images of floating plastic in our oceans that are the size of small islands.  In fact, one particular pile of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean is over twice the size of the state of Texas.  I don’t know if most people realize this or not but there are several plastic products that cannot be recycled.  These pieces will never breakdown and will be hanging around or floating forever!

It has become a normal practice of the U.S. to ship our recyclable waste to other countries, especially China.  But now China has closed its doors to our plastic garbage, and we are left looking for illegal smuggling operations in other countries to lighten our load.  Most recently, Malaysia has been the target of illegal dumping for the U.S., however, they have had their fill and are now shipping it back.  Freaking hilarious, our plastic chickens are coming home to roost!

On the not so funny side, we have no known alternatives to this crisis.  If we do not curb our appetite for products packaged in plastic, we will destroy our ecosystem and choke ourselves to death on this form of waste.  Corporations and their fat-cat executives are not about to look for alternatives because of the increase in costs and the potential reduction in profits.  They remain unaffected by this problem as gated communities are rarely affected by piles of plastics.  Unless of course, you count plastic surgery.

We, the customers are also guilty of this problem.  Each morning you start off your day with a glass of orange juice poured into your plastic cup and then you throw away the plastic jug it came in.  Now, many of you believe that you are doing good when you throw the container into the recycle bin.  Not so, as I earlier mentioned there is virtually nowhere for this waste to go as everyone treats it like a hot potato that no one wants in their hands.  We are literally drowning in this waste.

On the next trip to your store seriously take a look and ask yourself if there are any plastic products that you can find alternatives to.  There are some, glasses, straws, plates, every little bit will help.  I know that food packaging is a tough one as there are not many of our packaged delights that come in glass or other containers.  We have recently purchased steel straws and take them with us when we go out to eat (more on this later).  Any little thing you can do will help; it may not seem like much, but it can make a difference.

I can hear my critics say that they “do not believe that this problem exists”.  Of course, they don’t, these piles of plastic end up in the poor neighborhoods of poor countries.  Once it leaves our driveway it is no longer our problem.  We need to lose this attitude of “I don’t give a furry rats ass” and start caring and start taking part in demanding more from our corporations and our government.  For as sure as everyone farts, all of our chickens will come home to roost, and it will not just be the plastic ones.

Talk to Ya Later

The Grumpy Old Fart Customer @2019 All Rights Reserved