Garbage, Really!
The amount of packaging we haul home from the supermarket encasing, encapsulating, protecting and displaying the various food items that we purchase is quite simply astounding. Even for people like me who don't buy fast food items, foods already prepared in some way (processed). Purchasing basic foodstuffs, keeping a wide berth from those edibles that have undergone some kind of alterations is no guarantee of bringing home food in an unpackaged state.
We've kept compost bins going for about twenty years. Everything goes into them in the way of kitchen waste, with the exception of fish and meat, and although we eat plenty of fish, it's rarely whole fish, and we don't eat much meat, to create waste from those sources. There was a time - it doesn't seem all that long ago - that the amount of weekly garbage we put at the end of our driveway wouldn't fill one quarter of a garbage bag. And even at that, it was comprised mostly of packaging.
We do the usual recycling of paper products and of tins, glass and plastics. Yet we now put out to the curb for garbage pick-up almost a full bag of waste. Virtually all of it comprising packaging of one kind or another, that cannot be recycled. Materials that at one time were accepted in the blue box for recycling, no longer accommodated there, must be placed in the garbage.
How the hell did we ever get along before, without all this excess packaging? We managed, didn't we, and in the process produced one whack of a lot less waste. Packaging has become such a raging industry of its own that it cleverly markets its products as absolutely necessity to sustain the viability of product-life, to protect food from contamination, and to transfer it safely from supermarket to kitchen.
What a crock. I haul along on grocery shopping expeditions three large black bins so I won't have to use bags, and I've been doing this for a dozen years. Yet somehow, despite that I fill up with fresh fruits and vegetables, my shopping cart is also 50% full of other products - liquids requiring wax-paper cartons, eggs in plastic cartons, meat and fish products using polystyrene.
Come to think of it, some tomatoes and cucumbers to name a few fresh products are packaged in Styrofoam or plastic crates, or wooden crates as well, all requiring disposal, all filling up waste land-fill sites. We've become so accustomed - addicted perhaps - to the use of these lightweight, protective coverings on our foodstuffs we hardly give them a second thought.
Until we read that millions of tons of discarded packaging ends up in the globe's oceans, where it breaks down eventually into small bits, and turns into a floating continent of garbage. It's estimated in one area of the Pacific, an area the size of a continent, there are three kilograms of plastic garbage for every half-kilo of plankton. Aquatic life feeds on plankton. The garbage kills them.
In those areas where an attempt is made to recycle polystyrene, it is so expensive that it has no scrap value whatever - negative value through recycling; unlike glass which costs $89 a tonne to recycle, polystyrene costs $3,000 per tonne. Less than one percent of the plastic is recycled in the U.S., and that fairly well reflects what occurs in Canada, as well.
When nasty things happen in this world, whether it's the kind of fertilizer that proves inimical over a long period of use to the organic health of the soil, or cosmetic-use pesticides that make people severely ill, and pollute the environment, killing off wildlife and fish stocks. Or producing plastics that refuse to break down in the environment, where huge conscienceless, profit-driven corporations like Dow Chemical prove the culprits.
Invention, production, enterprise and sales are important to a growing economy, but not that vital that we imperil our environment and our health. How about we outlaw Dow Chemical?
We've kept compost bins going for about twenty years. Everything goes into them in the way of kitchen waste, with the exception of fish and meat, and although we eat plenty of fish, it's rarely whole fish, and we don't eat much meat, to create waste from those sources. There was a time - it doesn't seem all that long ago - that the amount of weekly garbage we put at the end of our driveway wouldn't fill one quarter of a garbage bag. And even at that, it was comprised mostly of packaging.
We do the usual recycling of paper products and of tins, glass and plastics. Yet we now put out to the curb for garbage pick-up almost a full bag of waste. Virtually all of it comprising packaging of one kind or another, that cannot be recycled. Materials that at one time were accepted in the blue box for recycling, no longer accommodated there, must be placed in the garbage.
How the hell did we ever get along before, without all this excess packaging? We managed, didn't we, and in the process produced one whack of a lot less waste. Packaging has become such a raging industry of its own that it cleverly markets its products as absolutely necessity to sustain the viability of product-life, to protect food from contamination, and to transfer it safely from supermarket to kitchen.
What a crock. I haul along on grocery shopping expeditions three large black bins so I won't have to use bags, and I've been doing this for a dozen years. Yet somehow, despite that I fill up with fresh fruits and vegetables, my shopping cart is also 50% full of other products - liquids requiring wax-paper cartons, eggs in plastic cartons, meat and fish products using polystyrene.
Come to think of it, some tomatoes and cucumbers to name a few fresh products are packaged in Styrofoam or plastic crates, or wooden crates as well, all requiring disposal, all filling up waste land-fill sites. We've become so accustomed - addicted perhaps - to the use of these lightweight, protective coverings on our foodstuffs we hardly give them a second thought.
Until we read that millions of tons of discarded packaging ends up in the globe's oceans, where it breaks down eventually into small bits, and turns into a floating continent of garbage. It's estimated in one area of the Pacific, an area the size of a continent, there are three kilograms of plastic garbage for every half-kilo of plankton. Aquatic life feeds on plankton. The garbage kills them.
In those areas where an attempt is made to recycle polystyrene, it is so expensive that it has no scrap value whatever - negative value through recycling; unlike glass which costs $89 a tonne to recycle, polystyrene costs $3,000 per tonne. Less than one percent of the plastic is recycled in the U.S., and that fairly well reflects what occurs in Canada, as well.
When nasty things happen in this world, whether it's the kind of fertilizer that proves inimical over a long period of use to the organic health of the soil, or cosmetic-use pesticides that make people severely ill, and pollute the environment, killing off wildlife and fish stocks. Or producing plastics that refuse to break down in the environment, where huge conscienceless, profit-driven corporations like Dow Chemical prove the culprits.
Invention, production, enterprise and sales are important to a growing economy, but not that vital that we imperil our environment and our health. How about we outlaw Dow Chemical?
Labels: Environment, Realities
posted by Pieface @ 2:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home