“Plastics my boy, plastics are the future.”

This is a quote from back in the 60’s by Walter McGuire in the film, “The Graduate.” The 60s was the period when plastics began to replace other materials such as wood and metal. Plastic is easily formed into whatever shape one wants. Plastics can be made rigid or bendable, soft or hard. Plastic is also cheap. It helped rid the oil industry of the problem of what to do with petroleum byproducts from making gasoline and other petroleum fuels.

So, what is the status of plastic now? Plastic has become the great protector, keeping us safe. Not only has plastic pretty much replaced wood and metal for a host of uses, but it is also an important part of our medical establishment which uses the substance for everything. Try to find anything in a hospital room that doesn’t depend on plastic to work. Keep in mind that when a patient is removed from a room, all of the plastic is discarded. Plastic wraps and contains our food and drink protecting these items from spoiling or being contaminated. It double wraps almost everything we buy. It prevents me from getting into a bottle of medicine I need to kill the pain in my leg. It also is the main cause of puncture wounds from people using a knife or scissors to try to open the plastic encased goods we buy.

Everything is wrapped in plastic. It’s for our safety you know. That plastic on your OTC pain killer that has some knarly side effects keeps some crazy person from putting cyanide in the bottle and replacing it on the shelf just for you. Halloween candy encased in plastic, and consisting mostly of high fructose corn syrup that is not at all good for you or the kids, is made safe, safer than those homemade cookies, brownies, and candied apples people used to give to trick-or-treaters. The plastic encasing those earphones that are going to give you a brain tumor, keeps people from stealing the merchandise thereby raising the cost to the rest of us. Hoorar for cheap merchandise! Let us not forget the spork, the pinnacle of plastics and one of the most useless tools ever created to fill a landfill.

Do I smell profit here?

Where does all of this plastic go when it can’t be used anymore? Is it recycled? Nope! Most of it can’t be recycled. Does it all go to the landfill? Well, a lot of it does, but when it does, most of it takes centuries to decompose. Some plastic gets into our food and water and eventually into us and other animals. Tons upon tons of it is reduced to tiny micro particles, has nanoparticles of aluminum and barium added to it, and this mixture of poisons is sprayed into the atmosphere to change the climate. No studies have been done to see what the effects and side effects could be. Now, for a limited time you can breathe it in, drink it in, and eat it in your food. I hear it can cause some problems when the stuff builds up in the body. What the hell! Can’t live forever.

In the 1960s, there was a phrase going around that was popular with our youth and in alternative media. “Plastic people,” was the phrase and if you called someone a plastic person, it meant that they were fake. I would say that the meaning has changed somewhat. Plastic people now literally means people partially composed of plastic.