Nowadays, plastic is everywhere—in our homes, in our businesses, in our landscapes, in our oceans. It is a fact of everyday life. Because of its inability to breakdown, plastic has been called the devil’s resin. I am trying, with limited success, to reduce the amount of plastic that I use, and I am sure this is true for a lot of readers.
Recently, Jan, from the blog The Snail of Happiness, wrote a post about plastic and how it might be used appropriately. She has agreed to let me link to this thought-provoking post.
Here are the first two paragraphs from Jan’s piece:
Today I want to discuss plastic… it’s in the news a lot at the moment and it is always portrayed as being evil. Well, I want to say that I disagree. Please stick with me on this and I’ll explain why I’m worried about the huge number of “plastic-free [insert town name here]” initiatives that are springing up and the way that plastic is presented currently in the media.
Language is very important, what we call things affects the way we perceive them. Call it “global warming” and the immediate image (in the UK at least) is nicer summers; call it “climate change” and that just means things are going to be different, and, after all, we all know that “a change is as good as a rest”; but call it “catastrophic climate breakdown” and there are no comfortable images to hide behind. See what I mean?
Click here to read the full piece and Jan’s take on the use of plastic in the modern world.
In some ways, Jan has made me reconsider my position on plastic. But her piece has also emphasized what I think is the need for a circular economy, where materials are seldom discarded and instead reused for other things. This should be done as locally as possible as shipping trash to China is rubbish. And could local centers, where material is recycled and remade into useful items, actually be a boon to towns and cities? A sort of mini resurgence in manufacturing? Maybe so.
Anyway, thank you, Jan, for this terrific piece.