I don’t often get on a soapbox, but I feel moved to today. I’ve always had environmental concerns, always, meaning since about high school. Back then I tried to get my mom to stop buying paper products with dyes in them and just sticking to white. She argued that she liked the pretty prints that she could coordinate with her kitchen and/or dishes. I accused her of not caring for the environment. She accused me of being a pain in the butt. She would also go to the argument that would always drive me crazy; the ‘my not buying it won’t make a difference, I’m just one person.’ Because everyone is saying the same thing, it is making a difference—FOR THE WORSE! I’ve done what I could in my small way. Buy paper products that are white. Recycle as much as possible. I still feel we are wasting too many of our resources. We act as though we have infinite supplies, but we don’t. Now, I am not an activist, but I am a very concerned citizen and would like to be part of the solution to our pollution and waste and most importantly our destroying the oceans problems. Key in this is getting rid of plastic as much as possible.
Growing up in late 1950s, early 1960s, we had milk delivered to our homes in glass bottles. Pop also came in glass bottles, as did ketchup and mustard, and most everything else. Plastic was invented in 1907 by Leo Baekeland, by combining two chemicals, formaldehyde and phenol. It was an incredible breakthrough and was used in phones, radios, nylons, and later, Tupperware, plastic shopping bags and artificial joints. By the 1960s it was used for all kinds of food products, such as milk. No more breakage of milk bottles dropping or having to return bottles to Twin Pines or whoever your manufacturer was. What a breakthrough! Just throw it away when you’re done! What a convenience! So, households transformed from glass to plastic, and everyone felt the world was a better and more advanced place. Until many years later…..
Now we have a massive garbage problem, for one, and here in Michigan, we are even taking in Canada’s garbage. The US sends ships full of our wastes to tiny, impoverished countries who have no means of responsibly dealing with it, but need the money so badly, accept it and proceed to dump it into the ocean. US gets to pretend it doesn’t know this is happening and that it is dealing with it appropriately. Plastic can take thousands to tens of thousands of years to break down. The biggest offenders are the plastic water bottles, made with the PET polymer (a form of polyester). 500 billion bottles are sold every year. These bottles degrade into microplastics and end up in our oceans. It is killing our marine life. World Wildlife Foundation has reported that there is some level of plastic in all sea turtles now. I don’t know if this bothers you, but I’m scared. Have we started a path of destruction that can’t be reversed? Is there still time to turn things around? I look around the house and see so many things made up of or have some plastic in them. And, how about how everything you buy is packaged in layers of hard and soft plastic? Is all that packaging necessary? I look at the volume of garbage produced just in our house alone and feel sickened. We have a four-generation household, from my 92-year-old mother, me and my husband, our 27-year-old daughter and 2 ½ year old grandson. So, between diapers, food packaging, paper products, etc., we easily have a large bag of garbage and recyclables weekly.
I’m looking for ways to reduce our waste and avoid plastic as much as possible. We’re getting a new bidet toilet seat, which will save on toilet paper. I’m buying meat from the meat counter wrapped in paper instead of the ones on Styrofoam wrapped in plastic. I’m inviting you to do the same, not necessarily the bidet toilet, but look for ways you can avoid or reuse plastic. Recycling has not been effective because it is difficult and costly to properly sort it, so much of it ends up in landfills or our oceans. And, of course, plastic is a big contributor to global warming.
I know I mostly post more lighthearted topics and try to take a whimsical view of things, but this is an area that deeply moves and concerns me. We need to make and demand changes before it’s too late! We have Shipt delivering groceries to our homes, and Doordash and others delivering prepared food to us, maybe it’s time to bring back the milkman and glass milk bottles. Does anyone have the number for Twin Pines?