One of my 'pet peeves' is the over use and discarding of plastic on our landscape, our water and just about everywhere we humans exist. When I was a kid 50's to 60's I did not notice litter, but I am sure it must have be there, but for the most part it probably was paper that returned to the earth. I remember the first time I saw plastic on the beach at the family cottage, it was the early 70's and the walk to the sandy beach was strewn with plastic pellets all about 1/8" in diameter. I mean thousand upon millions stretched the beach for over a mile (it's a long walk to the sandy beach). At first, because I pick up fossils or sea glass, I thought I had hit a gold mine. Well, this was one of those cases where it was too good to be true. I nearly died when I saw it was plastic and there were too many and for such a distance to pick up or sift through the rocks to get them all. I realized that they would be there forever and 'leaching whatever' into our Great Lake Ontario! How depressing. Now along our shorelines you see all shapes and sizes of plastic, lighters, tampon covers, pipes, bags - yuck!
On my walks here in Grafton, I pick up newspapers everyday. Yes, newspapers folded neatly into plastic bags that are tossed out from open car doors from the local news paper media. These papers are supposed to 'dropped' at the end of driveways. Sometimes they miss and more often than not people do not pick up their newspapers and let them slide into ditches or just die a slow death at the end of the driveway. It's disgusting. We are allowing these companies to pollute our landscape, turning a blind eye, all in the name of 'marketing business' here in Northumberland.
We are slowly getting rid of plastic bags and I mean slowly, as when I go to places other than grocery stores the use of these containers is still in full force. Really, we know how bad plastic is on our environment. If you are not sure of the damage that is done to our environment by plastic, then please look here http://www.whoi.edu/science/B/people/kamaral/plasticsarticle.html
Plastic is in our lives forever (unfortunately), but let us think about our everyday use of this item before you just grab that bag at check out or buy that soon to be useless item. I think all plastic should be taken back by the manufacturer of the item, especially children's toys. All those huge jungle gyms, big doll houses of all sizes are not recyclable! Why? Why not, I say, ship them back to those who made them.
