An ominous forecast on our nation's birthday

As Congress takes its July 4th recess, and as people around the USA celebrate their nation's nascence with fireworks and hotdogs, it seems like high time to reflect on the things that require our nation's attentions most urgently. It will come as no surprise that one of these things is our consumption of plastic bottles.

Nearly all of us use plastic in our daily lives, and indeed they are hard to escape it (as evidenced, no doubt, by our previous posts). However, there are arguably few consumables purchased and disposed of so regularly as the plastic bottle. A new article from The Guardian (http://bit.ly/2t0AH4W) claims that over a million plastic bottles are purchased in a single minute across the globe. That means that 20,000 plastic bottles are bought every second.

And this makes me wonder - how many plastic bottles have I bought in my life? 100? 1,000? How many have I recycled? Because even if millions of bottles are made and bought a day, this number is not as important as the number of bottles that are recycled vs. sent to the landfill.

The Guardian article claims that even though most bottles are fairly easy to recycle, at least chemically, we seem to be lagging in our determination to place the bottles in the correct bin. And I do know the complications associated with this: apartment complexes with no recycling option, institutions or municipalities that promise yet fail to recycle, and in general the inconvenience of the whole process.

Even so, the issue may not be entirely with the consumers. This article also claims that fewer than 7% of all recycled plastic bottles were actually turned into new bottles. Which begs the question(s) - why is this number so low, and where do all of the bottles go? Many of us already know that these ill-fated items are destined for the last big landfill for the human race, the ocean.

So maybe our birthday resolutions (am I the only person who makes birthday resolutions?) for every USA citizen can include prioritizing not only a reduction in the consumption of plastic bottles and an increase in the recycling of plastic bottles, but also an increased awareness of municipal and institutional promotion of consumption and limitations on recycling. Go ahead and pressure your local representative to make the changes you want to see in your community! It's time to stop living in the past, and welcome in year number 241 for this dynamic country.

Ella