Plastic recycling was a myth. We're living with the consequences
redoubled anxiety about what plastics were doing to us. For my friend Brett, it was the trip to Padre Island that did it. Upon returning, he purged all the disposable plastic that he could from his life. He ordered sheets of dissolvable laundry detergent, and bought toilet paper packaged in a cardboard box. “Hope you enjoy that meal,” he’d say, seeing a coworker sit down with a pile of plastic containers, “because the planet is going to be enjoying it forever.
Brett’s right on that point. The plastic we put into the world will be with us for hundreds of years, floating up on shores and circulating through our bodies—and those of our children, and our children’s children. There’s hope ofof new plastic pollution if we manage to hold off corporate plans to keep expanding plastic production until we choke on it. But the tragedy of an irrevocably-changed world is already here.
“There was more plastic on that beach than anyone could ever pick up,” Brett said. “And even if you did, there’s infinitely more out in the ocean, and more would just wash up.” It was that grief for what we’ve lost that woke me up. Brett has always loved the world’s wild places, and he spoke of Padre Island with a tone of indignation. But there was pain beneath the anger, a hint of something like heartbreak. And when I heard it, something in me broke, too.
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