The Problem with Plastic: How We Can Save Ourselves and Our Planet Before It’s Too Late – Judith Enck, Adam Mahoney

At some point in my life I was wandering around a small supermarket with too many groceries crammed into my arms. One of them was a 1.5 liter bottle of water, which at some point fell to the ground from about the height of my chest. By pure miraculous coincidence of physics, it fell in such a way to bounce back up into my arms. It was luck sure, but it was also plastic. A glass bottle would have had much worse results.

Right, that likely isn’t the best example you have or will ever hear about the virtues of plastic. There would be numerous inconveniences in our quotidian life without plastic. I think about that incident and have to think about the fact that I would rather live in a world where I had to deal with the embarrassment of a shattered bottle and a pool of water on the floor then the consequences of our life with plastic.

I thought these opinions were common, and then recently I met someone who thinks that plastic is fine, and its just “the scientists” making up problems for no reason.

The Problem with Plastic will give you an idea of just how bad the problem is. And yea, its bad. Plastic is just an extension of the oil industry, and its discovery was fueled by people looking to get rid of oil industry an byproduct. It also goes into how dependent we all are on it, and how corporations have been trying to greenwash everything, hoping that we all don’t notice.

The book does try to give you hope, and there is a call to action at the end. All the things none of our aging boomer parents wont do because this shit isn’t there problem anymore.

Despite that, I think the specific non-fiction genre for this work should be labeled “Oh, so I guess we really are fucked”. There is a part of me that understands that I should stop reading things like this and go fly my overpriced largely plastic consumer grade drone, if nothing else because in doing so I will be outside and might, be merest of accidents, touch grass. Still, I guess I can’t help myself. I like knowing not just that we are fucked, but specifically how the fucking is going to happen. The same part of my brain that thinks that I might one day have abs, or that I could defend myself against an assault, seems to think that with enough preparation I might be able to win against this threat to.