There is a prophetic moment in the movie THE GRADUATE, when Dustin Hoffman is told by his parents’ friend, “The future is plastic.”
Back in 1967 plastic was used to make toys, radios, and TVs. Food was wrapped in paper. Supermarkets packed your food in paper bags. At the beach most of the flotsam was maritime ropes and maybe ambergris colored broken glass rounded by waves roughing them up on the sand. Not anymore.
Every morning I walk the dog on the private beach in Palm Beach. I pick up soda bottles, potato chip bags, and the very prosaic plastic shopping bag accompany every purchase from a 7/11.
The next morning the highwater mark wears another wreath of discarded trash.
No one else helps with this Sisyphsean task and I’m not asking for any help, despite the situation worsening rather than decreasing along the shorelines of the world. why not?
Because like any form of pollution no one sees it as coming from themselves rather than someone else.
“It wasn’t me.”
No, but it really was.
Certain countries have reacted to the spawn of the oil companies.
South Africa and Bhutan have banned ultra-light plastic bags.
Not America. Not Thailand.
When I tell the 7/11 clerks I don’t want a plastic bag, they laugh as if I’m mad.
The herbalist along Pattaya’s Pattaya Tai Road tells me people thinks she’s cheap or kee-nio if she doesn’t bag their purchase. Even if it’s a small as a pack of gum.
The solution?
Get rid of everyone on the earth.
I know that’s a little severe, but I believe in radical answers to global problems.
In the meanwhile read this article in the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/magazine/22Plastics-t.html?hp
It might open your eyes unless you’re blind.
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