Plastic: our deadly gift to nature that keeps on giving

AFTER reading my comments about the way plastic garbage was choking the planet, my daughter wrote from Canada telling me about a recycling project being run by a church group in Winnipeg. After the shock of having a homeless woman die of exposure in the city (remember, it’s snowy winter there), the women of the church started crocheting sleeping mats out of old shopping bags. These allow homeless folk to sleep in some small degree of comfort when they come into the community hall for shelter from the cold.

I recall there was a similar project here, where people were converting black plastic garbage bags and old newspapers into sleeping bags for people sleeping on the streets.

There are many useful, and even lifesaving, items that can be made from recycled plastic, and obviously all recycling should be encouraged. However, we should remember another statement made recently by environmental scientists: all the plastic that has ever been produced is still in existence.

You can shred it, melt it, crochet sleeping mats and sun hats from it and make sleeping bags out of it, but it remains plastic and eventually it finds its way to garbage dumps or into the sea. Iron rusts away, wood rots and becomes food for worms. Natural fibres break down and become compost, and so do animals and humans.

We all return to the earth eventually. But it seem the earth doesn’t know what to do with our generous gifts of plastic. It hangs about forever, choking animals, strangling seals, being swallowed by cows and polluting the oceans in ever greater quantities.

The people who oppose nuclear power stations say they are alarmed about the nuclear waste, which takes centuries to become harmless. Plastic apparently never becomes harmless. For every teacup of nuclear waste, we probably produce a million tons of plastic waste.

I know there are plastics that claim to be biodegradable, but I wonder what percentage of our total waste is made from this. Not a significant amount, I fear. I wonder why people are not shouting as loudly over the mountains of plastic as they do over that radioactive teacup.

Some years ago we introduced a law making it compulsory to charge money for every plastic shopping bag the shops issued. This was meant to reduce the number of plastic bags that were dumped.

Has anybody ever wondered what happens to the money we pay for our shopping bags? It should go towards paying garbage collectors to round up all the stray bags and bury them deep underground.

Last Laugh

Two eminent surgeons met in the lift of a big city hospital.

“Wasn’t Mr Carruthers one of your patients?” asked the one.

“That’s right. I treated him for a gall bladder complaint.”

“Oh really? I read in the newspaper this morning that he had died from cancer of the liver.”

“Absolute nonsense old man! When I treat someone for a gall bladder complaint, they die from a gall bladder complaint.”