Take a close look at that aluminum can the next time you have a pop – or a soda or a soda pop, depending on where you are when you’re drink it. I hope you like it, because, according to my good friend Google, that aluminum can will still be around for the next 200-400 years. Your steel cans will last from 200-500 years, though I don’t think you should wait that long to eat your tuna and your green beans.
It’s sobering to think that our great, great, great, grandchildren won’t even know who we are, but they could still be kicking our cans down the driveway. That’s why I’ve decided to leave my descendents cans instead of cash. They’ll last longer and I have more of them.
I’m KIDDING! I may not leave them anything – except hopefully the recycling habit. Among my many idiosyncrasies, I’m an obsessive, compulsive recycler who has been known to dig through other people’s trash while scolding them for not recycling. I’ve noticed I have to do this less and less. I’m not sure if that’s because more people are recycling or if fewer people are inviting me into their homes.
I can’t help myself. Buying something built to last 400 or 500 years and using it only once seems a little extravagant to someone who grew up wearing darned socks. Of course, I don’t darn socks myself. I do the next best thing; I wear them with holes. But I digress.
If you think cans are made to last, consider the ubiquitous plastic bottle. Those that aren’t recycled will take 450-1,000 years to break down. And they say nothing lasts forever. Still, Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. I don’t see how we can get anything else done.
My answer to the plastic bottle is a giant mug I carry everywhere. I drink water out of it. I drink iced tea out of it. I drink diet cola out of it. The only beverages I don’t drink out of it are milk, juice and whiskey – because then I’d have to wash it. Plus I don’t care for whiskey. Think of all the plastic bottles and aluminum cans I’m saving. And think of all the water I’m saving by never washing my mug.
Between 500 billion and one trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year and less than 1 percent are being recycled. And do you know where the other 99 percent are going? Into my yard, that’s where. OK I may be exaggerating a little. I’m a bit touchy about the subject because a plastic bag has been tangled in the giant cottonwood tree outside my dining room window for more than six months. I’m beginning to think it will outlast the tree. I have to look at it every time I eat. Well, maybe not every time; I don’t always eat at the dining room table. Sometimes I eat directly out of the refrigerator, a habit I’m trying to break because it wastes electricity.
And my final startling statistic: Businesses who don’t recycle paper throw away enough of it to circle the earth 20 times. But it isn’t just businesses. I got a wedding invitation recently. There was an invitation, an RSVP card, an envelope to mail the RSVP card back in, an engagement picture, and a small piece of tissue paper. (For what, I’m not sure. Maybe to wrap a really tiny wedding gift or to dab my eyes at the wedding.) All of this was placed into another plain envelope and then slipped into the envelope it was all mailed in. It seemed wasteful not to mention labor intensive for the bride and groom. Despite all that work, statistics show that the couple has a good chance of divorcing, remarrying and having to do it all over again. Recycle? Yes! But also think of all the paper you save by eloping.
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Contact drosby@rushmore.com or see www.dorothyrosby.com
