Awash In Plastic

Yes Virginia, we spent hundreds of billions of dollars to launch a huge recycling industry that is now bankrupting municipalities all over North America.  But at least we cleaned up an ugly problem.

Sorry Virginia. We didn’t fix anything.  It’s a problem without a solution.  Plastic doesn’t go away because we recycle it.  First of all, most recycle trucks simply offload their plastic at the dump.  Why bother with your puny recycled plastic when there are trillions of tons of it floating around in the World’s once pristine Oceans.  You see Virginia, in coastal cities the recycling truck disgorges it’s contents into the Ocean.  Not to worry though.  Workers use huge barges to take the plastic and the rest of the city garbage a mile offshore before they dump it.  Out of sight, out of mindless.

Virginia, with every barrel of oil that we humans produce, we get plastic as a byproduct whether we want it or not.  Our greedy planet consumes millions of barrels of oil every single day Virginia.  Recycled plastic?  We don’t need to use it twice.  We’re drowning in plastic, Virginia.

More and more and more and more plastic with every barrel of oil we devour daily.  We burn the oil, but the plastic is with us forever.  There is nowhere to hide all this new plastic.  And Virginia, soon your school will have to close so that the budget can be spent on recycling trucks that take your own carefully recycled plastic to the dump.