Off The Editor’s Desk – 3-20-2019
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
Last week I was enjoying lunch at Bonnie’s Café in downtown Glenwood City and found a National Geographic Magazine (June 2018 issue) there and I picked it up and paged through it and found an article with the heading, “We Made Plastic, We Depend on it, Now We are Drowning in it.”
I would like to use a small part of the article written by Laura Porter, this week to inform everyone about plastic.
“If plastic had been invented when the Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England, to North America, and the Mayflower had been stocked with bottled water and plastic wrapped snacks, their plastic trash would likely still be around, four centuries later.
“Plastic production really only took off around 1950, we have a mere 9.2 billion tons of the stuff to deal with. Of that, more than 6.6 billion tons have become waste. And, of that waste, 6.3 billion tons never made it to a recycling bin.
“No one knows how much of that plastic waste ended up in the ocean, earth’s last sink.
“Roughly 40 percent of the now more than 448 million tons of plastic produced every year is disposable, much of it used as packaging intended to be discarded within minutes of the purchase. Production has grown at such a breakneck pace that virtually half of the plastic ever manufactured has been made in the last 15 years. Last year the Coca-Cola Company, perhaps the world’s largest producer of plastic bottles, acknowledged it makes 128 billion (bottles) a year. Nestle, Pepsi and others also churn out tons of bottles.
Last week I carried at lease four plastic bags from the local grocery store and you know that those bags have a life of about 15 minutes. My bags went on a shelf and will be used as a garbage can liner before they go to the landfill.
How many of us had some sort of drink this past week that was contained in a plastic bottle? Tell me if you can find your soda drink, milk or fruit juice in a glass container. Beer still is bottled in glass, but it is not returned to the bottler to be reused like it was many years ago. Did bottles or cans of beer that you brought home recently end up in the recycling bin or in the landfill?
I have been trying to figure a way to avoid the use of plastic in my daily life, but it is everywhere and now I can’t go to the store with my own bottle and ask them to fill it. Many years ago you could buy in bulk at the store. But today, if you buy fruit or potatoes, they end up in a plastic bag. Beer comes in aluminum cans that are recyclable and all soda should also come in metal containers.
Plastic is everywhere, from the grocery store to the lawn bags and all the cartons that contain juices or food products.
But, my question to you, are you recycling that plastic that you carried home. In Glenwood City, the recycling center collects number one and number two plastic and resells it to a recycler. Figures from City Hall indicate that the city collected and shipped some 13 tons of plastic over a two-year period. Records state that 10,660 pounds of number two plastic, which is the white plastic containers like milk and juice cartoons and 15,979 number one plastic which is the clear plastic like water and soda bottles and food containers.
For that amount of plastic the city received $2,877.32.
According to Megan Hines of the Dunn County Recycling Center, in 2018, they collected some 92.65 tons of number one plastic and 69.81 tons of number two plastic in Dunn County.
Next time you are at the store, ask for paper.
Thanks for reading! ~Carlton