Drowning In Plastic

 SINCE WORLD WAR TWO, billions of tons of plastic have been manufactured, distributed, and discarded throughout the world, and less than ten percent of it has been recycled, primarily due to the expense. over the past several decades, corporations have deceitfully misled people into believing that plastic is recycled, deceitfully enhancing popular support for the industry. When plastic started being mass produced after World War Two, it was widely promoted as a great boon to civilization, cheapening the cost of manufacturing consumer products and making them more durable. Three generations later, plastic has become an albatross around humanity's neck. The world's oceans are choc full of it; at some point in teh near future the total amount of plastic in the Earth's oceans by weight will exceed the total amount of fish by weight. Everyone on the planet ingests plastic particles every day, enough to make a credit card. Our bodies are rapidly accumulating it. I live two blocks from a Dollar General store, and a couple times a week I swing by and pick up a few items. Each time I walk out with a plastic bag containing them. I use the bags as trash bags at home, which forces me to empty them often, getting the trash out of the house, because they are so small. Twice a week the city garbage truck picks up my garbage, and twice a week into the local landfill it goes, there to remain for thousands of years.I don't know what to do about it. Its all so easy and convenient for me.To be honest, I should probably carry my own cloth sack into the store, and for that matter, so should everybody else. Reducing my crimes against the environment would only allow the store to hand them off to somebody else. And wouldn't force the huge corporation to reform. that would take a concerted organized effort by millions of people, and it somehow does not seem likely that Dollar General customers are going to organize to force change. By the time I die, I will probably have sent thousands more plastic Dollar General sacks into the landfill, there to lurk until long after the human race is extinct some alien archaeologist will dig the site, and wonder at the shopping habits and the self destructive habits of those strange creatures from long ago.Maybe they can recycle and clean my mess, and for that matter, maybe recycle life on Earth, and start something just a little bit better prepared to survive, and to contribute to the galactic culture.