I thought I was doing the right thing. Our local garbage (aka waste disposal service), offers a recycling can. I use it. I take the extra time to sort and rinse and thought I was doing the conscientious thing, until I watched Broken's episode on the "Recycling Sham" on Netflix.
Consider my bubble burst. 80% or more of what I was putting in the bin is not being recycled. Worse yet, a lot of it is winding up on foreign shores and poluting their formerly beautiful towns and countrysides. That's not what I intended.
I consider myself a conservationist not an environmentalist or radical anything. Take good care of the land/earth, use sustainable products whenever possible and don't litter. I compost and am an avid gardener and use reuseable grocery bags. I didn't know all my single use plastics were poluting other people.
I have traveled a lot and witnessed south American countries that don't have landfills and dump garbage and trash along their freeways, picked countless plastic bags out of ocean at my favorite Belizean snorkeling spots, but I had no idea how bad the plastic polution stretched. Nor how I was contributing to it.
I urge you to watch the episode. Technology has come a long way, there has to be a solution. I don't believe we can ever ban all plastics nor do I think we should. But would it be so hard to cut back on the singlel use plastics in everyday merchandising? We can all do a little and collectively we can all do a lot. If you have some time over the holidays take a look at the documentary.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays (be sure to recyle your wrapping paper)
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