IT started when Charleston Newspapers began recycling in earnest. All paper HERE. Cans THERE. All plastic in THIS.
It's a simple system, and I soon found myself doing more trash separation at home.
But because I didn't have room for three containers, I just added plastics to the can and glass repository.
I figured I would still be bagging it up about once a month.
After all, I'd already stopped using plastic grocery bags and adopted the handsome black re-usable Kroger bags. They're actually a lot easier to handle.
I still have empty bags shifting around in the car, but it's a more high-class kind of clutter.
But I was way wrong about the recyclables bag.
The "garbage" bag quickly became a smaller deal. The recyclables container, on the other hand, needed to be taken to the curb every week.
I had no idea I was using so much plastic.
When you start looking for it, plastic turns out to be everywhere. The bag soon filled with flotsam - blister packs, shrink wrap, clamshells, nuking trays from microwaveable food, prescription bottles, milk jugs, snack bags, bottle caps, cellophane packaging, tough plastic mailers, cat food bags, milk jug rings, bags and trays from salad greens, that tough plastic packaging nobody can even open . . . . There's no end to it.
Even with no plastic bags coming into the house, I was overwhelmed with discarded plastic.
It does make the light go on upstairs. If one person could discard all that plastic in one week, the societal problem must be gargantuan.
It is, and it's lethal.
Channel surfing, I happened upon a program about albatross chicks dying from plastic. Google "albatross" and "plastic," and you'll get the picture.
One of the items that comes up is a BBC story by David Shukman from Midway Atoll in the central Pacific. It's best known to Americans as the site of their first victory over the Japanese fleet in World War II.
Now Midway is distinguished for the fact that a soup of discarded plastic is causing some of the world's most endangered species to choke, starve or drown.
IT started when Charleston Newspapers began recycling in earnest. All paper HERE. Cans THERE. All plastic in THIS.
It's a simple system, and I soon found myself doing more trash separation at home.
But because I didn't have room for three containers, I just added plastics to the can and glass repository.
I figured I would still be bagging it up about once a month.
After all, I'd already stopped using plastic grocery bags and adopted the handsome black re-usable Kroger bags. They're actually a lot easier to handle.
I still have empty bags shifting around in the car, but it's a more high-class kind of clutter.
But I was way wrong about the recyclables bag.
The "garbage" bag quickly became a smaller deal. The recyclables container, on the other hand, needed to be taken to the curb every week.
I had no idea I was using so much plastic.
When you start looking for it, plastic turns out to be everywhere. The bag soon filled with flotsam - blister packs, shrink wrap, clamshells, nuking trays from microwaveable food, prescription bottles, milk jugs, snack bags, bottle caps, cellophane packaging, tough plastic mailers, cat food bags, milk jug rings, bags and trays from salad greens, that tough plastic packaging nobody can even open . . . . There's no end to it.
Even with no plastic bags coming into the house, I was overwhelmed with discarded plastic.
It does make the light go on upstairs. If one person could discard all that plastic in one week, the societal problem must be gargantuan.
It is, and it's lethal.
Channel surfing, I happened upon a program about albatross chicks dying from plastic. Google "albatross" and "plastic," and you'll get the picture.
One of the items that comes up is a BBC story by David Shukman from Midway Atoll in the central Pacific. It's best known to Americans as the site of their first victory over the Japanese fleet in World War II.
Now Midway is distinguished for the fact that a soup of discarded plastic is causing some of the world's most endangered species to choke, starve or drown.
The U.S. government says 50 tons of plastic float into Midway's waters every year.
Elizabeth Shogren of National Public Radio reported this month that many of the hundreds of thousands of Laysan albatross hatched on Midway every year don't make it - "so many that it's someone's job to pick up the bodies."
The parent birds range far and wide to feed their chicks, waiting for food to surface. Plastic looks like food.
"They grab it and they fly as much as 1,000 miles back to Midway to feed what they think is food to their chicks," Shogren wrote.
Kenneth R. Weiss of the Los Angeles Times reported on the contents of the stomach of a five-month-old dead chick:
"Out tumbled a collection of red, blue and orange bottle caps, a black spray nozzle, part of a green comb, a white golf fee and a clump of tiny dark squid beaks ensnared in a tangle of fishing line. . . .
"The atoll is littered with decomposing remains, grisly wreaths of feathers and bone surrounding colorful piles of bottle caps, plastic dinosaurs, checkers, highlighter pens, perfume bottles, fishing line and small Styrofoam balls."
In 10 years, workers in the Northwestern Hawaiian islands designated by President Bush as the Papanaumokuakea Marine National Marine Monument have removed 550 tons of plastic - including syringes, toy soldiers, bucket handles, Lego blocks, clothespins, toothbrushes, cigarette lighters . . . .
I am sickened. I never meant to be part of that.
And I thought I was doing a good thing picking up tangled fishing line on beaches.
The argument over man's contribution to global warming is not over, contrary to a rash of pronouncements. We will need carbon fuels until we can invent something better.
But there is no argument about this.
The next president of the United States, looking for an issue that unites rather than divides, would do well to tackle the barriers to plastic recycling.
I can't think of anyone who would not want to be part of the solutions needed there.
Maurice is editorial page editor of the Daily Mail. She may be reached at 348-4802 or ha...@dailymail.com.
