(The Last Straw)

The Mayor of New York City recently placed a ban on plastic drinking straws. A ban that was futile legislation at best, and only a tiny token against the ever-increasing battle against waste plastics. A plastic straw is minuscule in size when compared to the big gulp plastic cup that is its companion. The straw and cup represent just two of the plastic items that millions of Americans discard after having lunch. The straw and cup will be swept up into a large black plastic bag with other waste to await pickup and transport to the local landfill. It will join thousands of other trash bags stuffed with plastic and bulldozed into a mountain -sized plastic resting place. Now what!

Allow me to interrupt our little story to introduce some plastic facts: Americans discard 35 billion plastic bottles per year. Try to imagine this: there is approximately 1,000,000  square miles of plastic trash in the Pacific Ocean!  It’s a space that’s twice the size of Texas and it’s increasing every day. America is the biggest offender, followed closely by China and Germany. Since they are the biggest consumers, they discard the largest amount of trash. Not only is this trash an obscenity on our oceans surface, the potential damage to the precious coral reefs below is a constant threat.

Let’s return for a moment to that plastic landfill just outside New York City. Throughout the country, these bulldozed mountains of waste have been covered with grass and bushes to hide the garbage, henceforth earning the name “Mount Trashmore”. Are the American people ready for new mountain chains to complete with the Rockies and the Appalachian? The raw materials are accumulating as we speak.

Plastic straws are but a grain of sand in the big scheme of waste. Walk up and down the aisles of a major supermarket and observe how many plastic containers of liquid products occupy the shelf space. Now, count the glass containers (could you find any?) Plastic is the number one container!!! The reason? Glass is expensive, breakable, and can’t be used for large containers of product. Large glass trash cans? I rest my case.

What about war waste? I’ve seen acres and acres of tanks, trucks and other vehicles parked side-by-side in neat little rows in the desert. Fighter planes and bombers, bulldozers and PT boats, all rusting their life away. The last war ended too soon, and sad to say, these artifacts of destruction will be outdated for the next war.

We have reached an impasse! Between global warming and the plastic pileup, we have two major problems to confront. The global warming issue is being debated right now, with no solutions forthcoming. Perhaps we’ll start on the plastic issue by 2024.