After a long mild winter, we began the annual spring cleanup of our yard. It used to be a single day to rake the lawn, gather the leaves and all the refuse that has settled under the shrubbery in our yard. Now it takes two days as we have grown older. We are also finding more plastic bags, beverage containers and candy bar wrappers.
They all ended up in our recycling container for pickup this week.
Tuesday was Earth Day. It is also known as Mother Earth Day. For one day each year we are to focus on preserving and saving our planet. This year the focus was to reduce our dependency on plastic. Plastic is one of our miracle items. We are dependent on it every day of our lives.
My English muffins are stuffed into a plastic bag. The four-liter jug of milk is in a plastic container. The fleece and nylon jackets we wear are plastic products. Even those Lululemon leggings are made of plastic. We have become dependent on plastics in our lives.
We have been lulled to believe that plastics can be successfully recycled. It is true but that recycled plastic bottle still has almost 90 per cent new plastic in it. A great deal of plastic cannot be recycled. As consumers we need to clean the containers much more thoroughly.
Every year we are learning more about the pollution that plastics bring and the effects on land, humans and wildlife. When those fleece garments are washed, microfibers are released into the water and delivered to our sewer mains and eventually find their way into the watershed. And those fibers have now been discovered in fish and sea life. In your home, count the number of pieces of plastic that you touch before even starting your breakfast. It will shock you.
And when those same garments are tossed into our dryers, again they release microfibers into the air. Researchers have discovered micro plastics in the lungs of humans.
It is an interesting fact that more plastic has been produced in the last decade than in the previous century. Last year 500 billion plastic bags were produced, and most were for single use. Paper bags could replace many of those plastic bags. In the United States almost 300 beverage bottles per individual were used in 2022. Most ended up in landfills. There is no information about Canada’s use of beverage bottles, but we can assume similar numbers.
To protect our future and that of our grandchildren and their grandchildren, the world will have to come to a solution and treaty to limit plastic production and use in the future.
