People over a certain age will remember the movie The Graduate, from 1967, and the scene where Mr. Maguire approaches Dustin Hoffman’s character, Ben Braddock, at Braddock’s college graduation party and offers him advice. Mr. Maguire leans in to Braddock and says, “Just one word. Are you listening? Plastics. There’s a great future in plastics.”
Mr. Maguire had a point. Forty-seven years ago, the plastic production pendulum was already making its lopsided move one way. And it has stayed there, year after year, decade after decade, until now, when we’re all starting to realize what a huge mess we’ve made. We’re all guilty of keeping the pendulum firmly to one side.
Arguably, some plastics have improved our quality of life, such as plastics in hospitals and medical care. Plastic protects our food; helps build better-insulated homes, cars, cameras and computers; and so much more stuff. So, yes, it’s good, but it’s “disposable”—and that is the problem. Too many disposable things are made out of plastic. We simply use and throw away too much plastic!
Ultimately, the planet and generations to come will pay the consequences of this disposable plastic problem. As evidence: landfills busting over with plastic casually thrown away and not recycled; highways and bi-ways teaming with plastic strewn across their medians; and garbage patches floating in every one of our oceans, entering the food chain and causing a detrimental effect on all marine life that ingest pieces of plastic and over time will die.
Disney did its part with its movie Happy Feet. One character is the self-proclaimed leader of the penguins. He wears the “sacred talisman,” actually a plastic six-pack ring caught around his neck. He’s obnoxious and overbearing until the ring begins to literally choke the life out of him.
If you haven’t seen the movie Midway: Message from the Gyre, make a point of doing so. It’s a short film worth watching and sharing with your children. It’s heartbreaking; heartbreaking because of how we—as human beings—totally disregard the consequences of our mindless actions—like littering.
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