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In reply to the discussion: More Recycling Won't Solve Plastic Pollution [View all]Lulu KC
(2,547 posts)You have nailed it.
Yesterday realized that at conventional corner grocery store only the organic bananas are wrapped in plastic bags. So I chose between pesticides that are dangerous to the banana handlers or the plastic that is a participant in the overall doom of our planet. This time I chose for the banana handlers, but every time I look at that bunch of bananas on the counter I wish I could figure out an effective way to respond. I know the usual--contact Dole, push it out all over social media, etc. etc. but I really feel helpless against this huge machine of destruction. Then I think, "Why am I eating bananas anyway, Miss Eat Locally?" (Coffee and bananas not local and I'm hooked on both.)
Really. The plastic. What can we do about it?
Costco: Great to its employees. Good prices. Organic produce. Wrapped in plastic.
Grass fed beef at Whole Foods: Wrapped in plastic. For $4 more per pound, get at counter wrapped in paper that is COATED WITH PLASTIC.
Every single piece of cheap clothing I see that is made by slave or close-to-slave worker has tiny plastic bag with extra plastic buttons attached to it by a plastic thread. The clothes don't even last long enough to sew on a button, and how many people still do that? I have a collection that will eventually be landfilled by my children when I die, but am willing to bet that 99.99999999999999% of these are landfilled when they come home, along with the plastic-coated paper tags tethered by more plastic threads.
Pieces of gum: sealed in plastic. OTC pills: sealed in plastic
And yes! To get things out of the plastic that is more secure than a piece of American Tourister luggage requires a hacksaw. These are not Tylenol murders types of products! Everything is like this so it can be shipped and displayed more easily without paying people.
Late Stage Capitalism.
I seize the tiny changes, like Starbucks and the straw news this morning, fully aware that it is not adequate. But I will say that the sight of the ocean pollution seems to be reaching people in a different way.
Thanks for listening.