Off The the Dump We Go, Tra-la

Plastics don’t rot the way organic things such as vegetables, cotton clothing, or dead humans do. Plastics just break into smaller and smaller bits. That’s why sea creatures aren’t the only life forms consuming plastic; bits of plastic are in our drinking water, our table salt, and even mothers’ milk.¹

But wait, we recycle most of our waste materials, don’t we? No, actually, only about 14 percent of solid waste is recycled. (Estimates vary from 10 percent to 17 percent.) The remainder ends up in landfills, rivers, the ocean, and beaches.

And what happens to the materials we do recycle? As an article in the New York Times explained:

“In the past, the municipalities would have shipped much of their used paper, plastics and other scrap materials to China for processing. But as part of a broad antipollution campaign, China announced last summer that it no longer wanted to import ‘foreign garbage.’ ”²

China let us down and other Asian countries have followed its lead. They are shipping tonsof trash back to the countries where it originated, including the United States, Canada, and Mexico. ³

What will we do with this trash? To get an idea of the problem, I watched an NBC story on line.⁴ The story left me even more distressed and I wish everyone would watch it. Then maybe we could take on the real problem, which an unfortunate blend of our lifestyle and the politically powerful plastic manufacturers.

1. “Plastic in Your Drinking Water, Table  Salt & Mother’s Milk,” earthdecks.com

2. “Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or Maybe Not” , May 20, 2018, New York Times.

3.“Malaysia has started returning tons of trash to the west: 'we will not be the dumping ground of the world'”, Newsweek, June 20, 2019.

4.“Recycling Breaks Down: US Struggles to Keep Plastic From the Dump”, NBC, Aug 13, 2018, Broadcast by Chanel 4, Washington.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domethem strongerr

Plastic Kills, but Who Cares?

Dead whales wash up on beaches. Why did they die? Could it be the 48, 67, or 88 pounds of plastic in their stomachs?*

Photo found on the internet.

Whales aren’t the only ones dying. Plastic kills millions of sea turtles, sea lions, seals, fish, and sea birds each year. Either they mistake it for food and eat it or they become helplessly entangled in large pieces of plastic such as nets, bags and fishing line.

Well, heck, who cares about dead whales, anyway? We need our conveniences. Manufacturers must enjoy the profit from low shipping costs of plastic containers.  Humans are the most important species and we can’t be expected to look out for other species. They will have to look out for themselves and deal with our plastic waste.

* Whales are also dying because their food cannot thrive in warmer ocean temperatures, so the whales starve. But that issue is for another day.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Casing out the Condiments

In the second installment of the Grocery Plastics Tour I move on to the condiments aisle, looking particularly for mustard sold in glass jars.

Here is the mustard section. I scan the shelves.

I see twenty-nine different kinds of mustard, including each of the different flavors offered by the same company. Of these, only one kind is in a glass jar, Grey Poupon, an import from France, is, of course, the most expensive. Otherwise the shelves are filled with plastic, plastic, plastic, and more plastic.  

Next to the mustard is the array of plastic bottles of ketchup. There's no use looking here.The old glass bottle of ketchup has been extinct for years.

Moving on to mayonnaise and its kin I find no glass whatsoever.

How about the vinegar section?

Nope.  Nada.

Okay, but maybe the salad dressings will have a glass bottle or two.

Ah, at last, amongst the forest of plastic, I find four flavors of Brianna’s salad dressing in glass bottles on the top shelf, far left.

When the squeeze bottles are almost empty, I throw them away, because the last can’t be squeezed out. I used to enjoy adding a bit of water and getting the last dregs of catsup to pour out. That just doesn’t work with plastic squeeze bottles, so what can I do? I can toss the bottles in the trash or recycling, which creates more problems. Either the enormous landfill gets another plastic bottles that won’t decompose for hundreds of years, or I send the bottle to some third-world country to be made into something else. That, too, is problematic. But I’ll save the facts and my thoughts on that on another day.

For today, it’s enough to have observed the plethora of plastic in the grocery store condiments aisle.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Jugged

Every trip to the grocery store dismays me. Single-use plastic is everywhere, in every aisle. We carry all that plastic home and try to recycle it or just throw it in the trash. 

Do we really need this wasteful junk? Landfills are full of it, creating great hills that alter the landscape. Much of it isn’t even put into a trash receptacle so it litters beaches in every remote part of the oceans. Bits and pieces of it mar the landscape. It collects on fences and litters even the gravel road that leads me home. Sea creatures ingest it or become entangled in it and die.  Whales that wash up dead on beaches are always found with stomachs full of plastic – 15 pounds of it, 80 pounds of it, 22 kilograms of it, on and on.

No wonder a grocery aisle appalls me! That’s why I’m going to war on single-use plastic. 

The first plastic I’m attacking is laundry detergent, both liquid and pod, packaged in big plastic jugs.

Is it really easier to lift that heavy jug and pour some liquid into the lid before emptying the lid’s contents into the washing machine? Or is it easier to scoop granular detergent and dump it into the machine? Does the liquid really distribute more easily in water, thus avoiding clumps of un-dissolved powder when the washer finishes its cycle? In my sixty-some years of doing laundry I’ve never had that happen, and I’ve managed to use powdered detergent packaged in cardboard boxes the whole time. 

Although I thought the plastic measuring cup in every box of it was a terrible waste, for several years I used Arm and Hammer, which I could find at only the Kroger stores in my town. Then, shockingly, even Arm & Hammer quit making powdered detergent. Now there is none.

The amount of plastic contained in these jugs is staggering. These jugs aren’t sold in just one store in my town. Every one of a dozen grocery stores has an aisle just like this one. Everybody in town is buying these jugs, not just once, but again and again. Multiply that by every city in the United States and you will have enough detergent jugs to build a jug Pike’s Peak.

There’s no good reason for consumers to accept detergent in plastic jugs.  We should demand powdered detergent packaged in cardboard boxes.  We should hold the manufacturers responsible their role in plastic devastation. Let’s see if the consumer is always right.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Convenience

Convenience – how we love it! We pursue it and snatch it up at the earliest opportunity. Many of us make our lives so convenient (and sedentary) that in order to get any exercise we have to join fitness centers where we can use machines that produce nothing.

“Working out,” is what it’s called. It seems like “acting out,” in the old sense of pretending to be or do something on a stage. If that comparison is valid, “working out” must mean that one is pretending to work. Is an underlying implication that physical effort is beneath the person who “works out?” No, this has nothing to do with snobbery. It’s just that modern life places most of us in positions that are totally convenient and require no physical effort from us. Yet we know that our bodies were designed to be used, and that exercise is essential to keeping our them in good order. That’s probably why apartment complexes and businesses offer free gyms and why there are many for-profit health clubs.

This scheme of “working out” seems to produce a great deal of wasted energy. What if all the exercise machines were built or retrofitted to harness this wasted energy as electricity? Just imagine that every exercise bike and treadmill was hooked to a generator. The wattage harvested would not be insignificant.

If every machine were designed to harvest energy, “working out” would become just plain old “working.” Perhaps even the vocabulary would change. Instead of bragging that one ran twenty miles on the elliptical machine or squatted three hundred pounds, one could say, “I generated 60 watts of electricity this morning.”

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

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The Customer Is Always Right, Right?

“The customer is always right,” is a traditional motto for businesses in the United States. What the customer wants is what he gets, at least that’s how it used to be.

But today things have changed. It’s the stockholder who is always right, not the customer. Businesses don’t care about the customer now; they care only about the bottom lines on their financial statements. 

Here is a recent example: Baker’s Chocolate used to offer an eight-ounce package of baking chocolate containing eight individually wrapped one ounce squares. Each square had a groove down the middle, making it easier for the cook to use half an ounce, if needed.

In 2013, everything changed. The package contents went from eight ounces to four ounces. Moreover, the individually wrapped one-ounce packages disappeared and were replaced by a single four- ounce bar of baking chocolate. The product has shrunk and was now less convenient, but its price did not change.

I’ve noticed the shrinkage trend for several years. Who else remembers that coffee once was sold in one-pound tin cans that opened with a key so the lid could be replaced? Who else remembers the lovely aroma that came when one turned the key, releasing the pressurized seal? Somewhere along the line coffee was sold in plastic bags, which happened to weigh just 12 ounces, a 25-percent reduction.

Any grocery shopper who is paying attention has seen these sneaky weight reductions occurring in almost every kind of food products. Usually we accept these changes without much protest, but the changes to Baker’s Chocolate produced a firestorm of home baker complaints. We were so incensed that the venerable New York Times ran an article* reporting that a Kraft spokesperson claimed that “Our consumers have told us that they prefer this size over the larger size because the majority of our Baker’s recipes call for four ounces or less. The easy-break bar makes it faster to melt and easier to break apart.”

Kraft‘s spokesperson must think we are fools. If so many of “our customers” are pleased, where are their voices. The only ones speaking up are the unhappy ones. The customer, sad to say, is no longer always right. The Baker’s Chocolate package is still four ounces.

*Halving the Portion, but Not the Price, June 22, 2013, The New York Times.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

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Waiting to Die

When I turned eighty almost four years ago, it seemed to me that I had reached the appropriate time to die.  My life has not been one of restraint and caution. I have drunk bourbon daily for more than twenty years. I drink several cups of coffee every day. What’s more, I have smoked tobacco for most of my life, and still enjoy five or six cigarettes every day. 

I do not deserve a long life, nor did I expect one. I braced myself, thought about what happens in death, and sat back, waiting for it to come to pass. I waited, and waited, and waited some more.

On the car drive returning to Kansas from Tucson I experienced a moment of truth. I suddenly realized that waiting to die is pretty damn boring. I’m done with that, I thought. I decided to give up the role of distant observer and become a participant again.

When we got back to Kansas, I looked at our home with new eyes – eyes that saw how I’ve let things slide, how stuff has accumulated. I don’t even know what this house contains. So this is where my return to life begins. I have resolved to clean out every drawer, cabinet, and closet, one each day. This alone could take the rest of my life, but it’s interesting, which is more than I can say for waiting to die.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer