To the End of the Earth

We the undersigned propose a bill to leave this world a better place than we found it. 

[primarily environmental and health-related, but with important ramifications regarding the economy, jobs creation, and the "War on Terror"]

The human race has created two substances that will continue to exist until the sun goes supernova and destroys our planet utterly.  These substances are bronze and plastic.  The inventors of bronze have left us and our posterity a legacy of inspiring statues, breathtaking jewelry, fascinating tools, and even impressive weapons, to wonder over and ponder in our hearts.  What are we leaving, to the end of the earth?  Garbage.  

Plastics fill landfills, leach hazardous chemicals into our food and water, kill wildlife, and "junk up" our planet.  There is a floating island of plastic TRASH twice the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific Ocean--known to the sailors who must navigate around it as “the Great Pacific Garbage Patch”--which just gets bigger and bigger--and bigger and bigger--every year.  Most sensible people "get" that we need to stop BURNING oil, as it is filthy and toxic and ultimately a limited resource, no matter how many of our remaining natural places we decide to destroy, or how many wars we are willing to fight, to obtain the little there is left of it.  However, few people think of the world-conquering TSUNAMI of hazardous waste that is produced by creating stuff made out of petroleum that is INTENDED to become trash.  How does it make any sense to make a one-time-use grocery bag--or a fast-food straw, or a coffee cup you'll use at least one of every weekday of the year--out of the world's most PERMANENT material???  Especially when the ingredients for that material are limited and NON-renewable?

Worse, packaging food or drink in plastic or styrofoam is not only wasteful and shameful with respect to using one of the world’s most PERMANENT substances in one-time-use fashion, but hazardous to our health.  Plastic packaging of food and drinks is linked to reproductive-related cancers (breast, testicular, ovarian, penile--any tissue that responds to sex hormones), as well as to early puberty and related physical and psychological problems in children (ref the CDC for both of these findings).

THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW.

Here is our sketch of the law: 

1)  NO products may be made of petroleum derivatives that are designed to be used once and discarded.  Period.  Give the industry two years--NO MORE--to redesign and switch over to creating "throw-away" products out of ONLY materials that are designed to break down into harmless constituents (NOT very tiny strands of polymer, but ENTIRELY organic constituents), IN THE CONDITIONS THEY ARE LIKELY TO BE FOUND IN.  This means that fast-food containers, cups, and straws need to break down into completely organic materials in landfills, in streams, in the ocean, in the storm drain, and on the side of the road.  Garbage bags, the same.  Grocery bags should probably all be made of reusable canvas, but again, if we must have throw-aways, they must be FULLY biodegradable under ALL likely conditions.  Attractive incentives should be given to the companies that do this the fastest, and those that do so with the greatest success.  No other animal fouls its own nest (and everybody else's!) as we do.  Honestly, we can and MUST do this.

2)  Steps must be taken to begin to recover and recycle ALL plastics (not to mention all the other trash) that are currently sitting (or floating) about in the environment poisoning our world.  This is an industry FULL of meaningful jobs, just waiting to be inaugurated. 

3)  Any plastic that does continue to be made--for PERMANENT uses, or for one-time-use products such as medical supplies where use of alternatives is found not to be practicable--must be made from recycled plastic that has already been produced.  There is plenty, especially if we are recovering and recycling all the plastic that has heretofore been made, and not wasting it by making throw-away junk out of it.  A suitable, BRIEF period of time to switch over for these purposes must be put in place for this, too.  If certain materials, such as some medical plastics, are found not to be safely recyclable after use, then research needs to be instituted into new, safely biodegradable substances from which to make these, as well.  Look:  MORE new jobs! In high-paying RESEARCH and DEVELOPMENT!  An additional side effect:  if we are no longer burning oil or using it to make garbage, the funding for terrorists from the Middle East will literally dry up and blow away.  The "War on Terror" won without a single additional shot!

4)  There should be facilities in place in ALL communities to recycle ALL recyclables--shame on us that there aren't already!!!  There are more jobs in the offing there, for people to work in and for these facilities. 

5)  There should be incentives for recycling and reusing.  For example, soft drinks in glass bottles with deposits again would be a great step, since they can be sterilized and reused; other deposit-based systems for other types of food containers would be great, too.  Since nobody should be eating or drinking anything out of plastic, anyway (and just try that these days!), this would have health benefits, as well as environmental and financial benefits.  There should also be stiff fines for NOT recycling recyclables.  Even MORE new jobs can be found here, on both the incentive (collecting, shipping, sterilizing for reuse, issuing deposit refunds) and the enforcement fronts.  If we just can't see our way to sterilizing and reusing as we used to, at the very least food and drink should be packaged only in recyclable glass or paper products.  This might mean working on making many foods (such as bread) that are currently packed full of preservatives, packaged in plastic and shipped great distances (usually burning a ridiculous amount of petroleum along the way), more local in origin to each point of sale, which will be better for the quality of the food, the health of the consumers, the quality of the environment, and for local economies, too.

The only choice here is whether we will do the right thing and grow up to a mature relationship with the environment we are DEPENDENT upon for our lives--or go on fouling our own nest like trapped pigs until we create conditions under which not even we can manage to survive, leaving only our garbage to attest to the value of our lives. 

When people know that something is the RIGHT thing to do, they WILL do it, even if it inconveniences them.  Some people will fuss.  But honest to God, the country that could put children in the 1940's to work peeling the foil backing off their GUM WRAPPERS for the war effort can BY GOD DO THIS.  It must be done.  It is time to put the "ugly, fat consumer-American" stereotype in the garbage for good.  We can do better; we can be better; we can take the lead in making everybody's life better.   Let's take the initiative and be the leaders in making this planet a BETTER place than it was when we got here. 

Thanks for your time and consideration.  Just do it!!!

Signed,

B.D. Stillion   Jonesboro, AR