Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Bob Stannard, a lobbyist and author. This piece first appeared in the Bennington Banner.
About 35 years ago I needed some wire. It’s been so long that I don’t recall what I needed wire for but I did need some. If you lived in Dorset and needed wire you went to H.N. Williams Department Store (a.k.a. Rumney’s) and got what you needed. I didn’t need a lot of wire, but I needed more than a little.
When I told him what I was looking for Austin Rumney said, “I got just what you need” and we proceeded to go off into the dark corners of his store. He handed me a spool of electric fence wire. The spool was made of plastic and was about a foot in diameter with about a six-inch hole in the middle. It contained about a half a mile of thin wire. Austin told me that wire like this used to come on wooden spools, but now they come on plastic. “It’ll last forever,” he had said.
“Geez, Austin. I think that’s a little more than I need,” I said staring at this rather large amount of wire.
“It’s more than you may need right now, but you’ll be needing wire for something down the road,” he said.
Yesterday I was, again, using this same spool of wire; this time to rig up some new tomato cages. I still have plenty of wire left and most likely will leave it in my will to one, if not all, of my kids. Of course, I may have to find something else to hold the wire.
When I picked the spool off my shop wall a piece of plastic broke off. Then another and another. By the time I got to my truck, where I was working on the cages, more and more pieces of the plastic spool began falling off and landing on my driveway. When I was done making up the cages there was quite the little pile of plastic chips on the ground. I carefully picked them up and disposed of them. I returned the plastic spool back on the hook in my shop. There is no doubt that the next time I use this spool of wire more pieces will fall off. It may very well completely disintegrate in my hands. So much for “forever.”
Jan. 10, 1992, was an important day. Twenty years ago, 28,800 plastic bathtub toys fell off a cargo ship south of the Aleutian Islands near the International Date Line. On this day plastic rubber ducks began a floating journey that would take them around the world.
Twenty years ago, 28,800 plastic bathtub toys fell off a cargo ship south of the Aleutian Islands near the International Date Line. On this day plastic rubber ducks began a floating journey that would take them around the world.
According to Donovan Hohn’s book, “Moby-Duck,” dozens of cardboard boxes containing thousands of plastic bathtub toys wrapped in plastic packaging came bobbing to the surface of the rough seas. First the cardboard boxes decomposed. Then the stiff paper behind the plastic packaging dissolved and released the ducks (and other animals) on their respective voyages.
The ducks were designed to float and since they were made of plastic, designed to last forever. The ducks began appearing on unsuspecting beaches all around the world. On the surface (no pun intended) this seems like an amusing story until you realize that we are loading up our oceans, every ocean, with plastic.
There is a place on this planet that you and I will most likely never visit. It is known as the “Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch.” The currents of the Pacific Ocean collect floating plastic bottles and other garbage and push them to this one area, which is hundreds of miles in diameter. There is dispute as to how large the area is. Some say it’s the size of Texas. Others say it’s about the size of France. Does it really matter? Seems as though garbage that would fill the state of Texas would be too much garbage.
This is disgusting enough but now understand that much of the disintegrating plastic ends up in the stomachs of large fish; fish that you and I eat. Quoting Mother Nature Network, “Unlike most other trash, plastic isn’t biodegradable — i.e., the microbes that break down other substances don’t recognize plastic as food, leaving it to float there forever. Sunlight does eventually “photodegrade” the bonds in plastic polymers, reducing it to smaller and smaller pieces, but that just makes matters worse. The plastic still never goes away; it just becomes microscopic and may be eaten by tiny marine organisms, entering the food chain.”
No matter how responsible we try to be there are those who seemingly could care less about doing the right thing. We see it every day. Greed causes some to ruin lives, as well as the planet, for their own personal gain.
If you find it acceptable that a flotilla of garbage (now possibly radioactive thanks to Fukushima) is drifting around the globe then don’t bother doing anything differently from what you’re doing. On the other hand, if this makes you sick to your stomach then get mad about it.
Right now I think I might go out to my shop and transfer that wire to a wooden spool. I hope I can recycle the rest.
