Plastic? Fantastic - NOT!

Those of us of a certain age will remember the scene in The Graduate when recent college grad Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman) is given career advice by one of his parents' friends. The friend hustles Benjamin away from the noisy cocktail party crowd and whispers one word in his ear: "Plastics."

The Graduate was a 1967 movie, and the plastics industry, which had begun growing after World War II - all those plastic toys we grew up with - was really starting to take off. Plastics, by the late 60's, were coming of age, but the best/worst was yet to come. Plastic soda bottles weren't around until the 1970's. And water available in plastic bottles? No such thing for another decade or two. And all the plastic packaging, the electronics, the over-consumption. Who could have imagined it all?

So entering the plastics industry in 1967 would have been a smart move. (Probably a smarter move than eloping with Elaine. Just sayin'.)

But all the plastic we use and abuse? Anything but smart for the planet. Even if we try to be environmentally conscious, reduce our use of plastics, increase our recycling efforts.

Not that it's all for naught. Just mostly for naught. 

I try to be a bit more careful about using plastics.

Blessed with good local tap - thank you, Quabbin Reservoir - I rarely buy bottled water. I drink chilled tap, and when I'm out walking in hot weather, I carry chilled tap with me in a metal water bottle. Sure, I'm occasionally out, about, and thirsty, and I'll hit the CVS fridge case for some Poland Spring. But mostly I'm pretty good here.

I get almonds, pecans, and sunflower seeds from the bulk set up at the grocery store, and I've stopped getting mine in the handy plastic containers just sitting there. Now, I pour the amount I want into a paper bag and transfer it to a glass jar when I get home.

But there's no paper option for olives, so I have to use the plastic container.

I do know that I don't need to buy pre-chopped pineapple, but I do. So there's no choice but plastic. But why do blueberries and strawberries have to come packed in so much plastic? At the farmers' market, they still use the recyclable green whatever-it-is (sort of like the feel paper mache). But in the grocery store, it's in plastic. Oh, sure, I should be more worried about the fact that, if I'm not getting my strawberries and blueberries at the farmers' market, they're probably coming shipped in from afar. So there's that eco worry. Still, all that plastic?

And all that plastic? I am quite virtuously recycling it. I collect everything I possibly can - papers, bottles, plastics - in the blue recycle bin that is hidden away in a big wicker basket with a lid. And once a week I bag it up in a big clear recycle bag and leave it at the curb at 6 a.m.  - I set my alarm - on trash day. Sometime between 6:01 a.m. and 7:30 or so, I hear the truck chugging down the street. I turn over for a few more zzz's, confident that I've done my bit. 

Which, as it turns out, is a big so what.

Of the 51 million tons of plastic waste US households generated in 2021, just 2.4 million tons — or 5 percent — was recycled, new research shows. (Source: Boston Globe)

And that's not the fault of the virtuous home recyclers like me, who are actually more than 5 percent of consumers. (Surprisingly - at least to me - virtuous Massachusetts has a very low rate of plastic bottle recycling.)

Turns out, plastic recycling is something of a myth. 

Plastic, which is made from fossil fuels, is notoriously difficult to recycle. A major reason: Though they can be broken down into broad categories, there are thousands of varieties of the material, each with its own chemical makeup. Most cannot be recycled together, so to be processed, they must be meticulously sorted...

[And] no plastic product meets a common industry-backed standard for recyclability, though many bear the well-known “chasing arrows” symbol.  

As a result, most of the plastics we virtuously try to recycle never make it through the process. So:

...plastics have never achieved even a double digit recycling rate in the country, while recycling rates for other materials, like glass, metal, and paper, are much higher.

Well, good new of glass, metal, and paper. But bad, bad, very bad, bad news when it comes to plastics.

Plastic production and disposal account for 3.4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions...“If plastics were a country, they would be the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world,” said Lisa Ramsden, senior plastics campaigner for Greenpeace USA.

...Contributions to the climate crisis are just one major problem with plastic production and disposal, the report says. The material also contributes to ecosystem degradation, lets off endocrine-disrupting and cancer-causing chemicals, and harms vital coral reef ecosystems. 

Ugh, ugh, ugh, a thousand times ugh.

And getting even uglier: plastic production is up, and expected to keep going up, especially as the petrochemical industry looks for new ways to use their wares if demand for gasoline goes down and if we switch to more sustainable sources of power.

Swell.

The same year that The Graduate came out, Jefferson Airplane released their song, "Plastic Fantastic Lover." 

Perhaps Benjamin and Elaine heard it played when they were tootling around in his cool little Alfa Romeo.

As for a career in plastics? Fantastic? NOT!