In the movie The Graduate the college student played by a very young Dustin Hoffman is given investment advice in the form of just one word --plastics.
The other day I was in the grocery store buying one item, milk, which was four plastic bags within another plastic bag. When I declined yet another plastic bag to carry it away I got what my wife Ruth describes as "the look." There are some cashiers who stare in disbelief or disgust when a plastic bag is declined by the shopper. I managed to get out of the store without the additional plastic.
I heard this morning about a new documentary called Addicted to Plastic http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/atp.html . If you are reading this blog entry you are using plastic and are probably surrounded by the stuff, as am I. The film-maker mentioned that the U.N. figure for plastics in the ocean is 47,000 pieces per square mile. Mind-boggling. I mentioned before that far out to sea there are circular currents filled with plastic like a giant toilet bowl that never flushes. I was dismayed to hear that in some municipalites as little as 5% of plastic put in the Blue Box is actually recycled. Yikes.
When the psalmist declared that "the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" there were no plastics. Most of the planet's plastic has been produced in the past fifty years, and virtually all of it is still out there.
The old environmental maxim Reduce, Reuse, Recycle begins with a call to lower consumption. Biodegradable alternatives have been developed but are not yet widely available or used. In the meantime reduced use of plastic is a simple thing we can commit ourselves to each day as God's people who believe that this is the Creator's good green and blue earth.
4 comments:
It is very hard for me to imagine the world without plastic. I think of all the things surrounding me in my home, and sometimes I don't even know what's made with plastic and what's not. I do try to avoid plastic and recycle what I use, but I know that I have only touched the tip of the iceberg. I think the bottom part of the iceberg, the part that sunk the Titanic, will be what sinks us if we don't figure out an alternative and recycle 1000 times more than we do now.
Yup, Deb, there are alternatives, if we really want them on a societal level. Maybe this global economic downturn will push us to reassess our values.
It'S always been a pet peeve of mine that it takes 5 plastic bags to put milk on the table.I would think this kind of plastic rarely is recycled. We use cardboard containers. Are they any better? Are they recycled any better than plastic? Maybe return to the past (returnable glass),but will this drive up transportation costs.Maybe a worse evil? I am a user of plastic water bottles (convenience),my wife says laziness.But I am a faithful recycler and hope that who ever handles the material after me will do it right.Should the processes for recycling not be in place before we are asked to recycle?I know the best way is to reduce the use of plastics.I will try...
Your question is a good one Brian. The doc maker wondered why there aren't government standards for uniformity in packaging so that recycling is easier.
We also heard this week that the Ontario government plans to place the responsibility for dealing with packaging on those manufacture and sell the products. This is already happening in Europe and -guess what?- the amount of packaging at point of sale has been greatly reduced.
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