Living In A Plastic World

THE WORLD IS AWASH in...plastic. that wonderful creation of twentieth century chemistry, that magical substance, made up of long strands of carbon atoms, so flexible, so versatile, with so very man uses and applications, is having the unintended consequence of turning the entire world, the ocean's, the soil, our food, our water, and our bodies, into repositories of plastic, none of which are places where we intended to put it. plastic, as we all know, is not biodegradable, and thus does not mix well with land fills or compost heaps. It simply sits where it is discarded, occupying space, forever, either we recycle plastic, use all commodities of plastic manufacture until hell freezes over without ever throwing them away, or we recycle them. It turns out that the United States recycles only about twelve percent of all discarded plastic materials, and the rest is thrown into waste heaps, and ignored, only to stay there, while we add more and more to our landfills and waste heaps. the rest of the world does little better; only in Europe is there a serious attempt to limit the plastic pollution of our environment. In every major city in the world, and in most towns of all sizes, the plastic content of the community water supply can be measured in terms of its plastic content. the plastic is there, always, measurable. a sample of sea water taken from any salty body of water anywhere in the world shows the same things. Its in all our food, and it dwells in our bodies, all of our human bodies, all over the planet, in measurable w=quantities. Such is the ubiquitous extent to which we in our modern world have used, and misused plastic. Its too late to do anything about it; to do wo would be to pass every person, place, and thing through some sort of plastic removing filter, and no such device has yet been invented. Our days of non plastic purity are behind us. Even if we were to eliminate the manufacture, sale, and use of plastic immediately, the world's current supply would linger for thousands of years. It is irrevocably embedded in us, and our culture, like carbon in the atmosphere. And if that isn't frightening enough, random samples of breast milk taken and analyzed from human females reveals traces of jet fuel. Not only are we what we eat, it would seem, we are what we make.