76
have adequately anticipated the actual effects of the sheer number of single-use
plastic bottles on the environment over time.
Today, plastic Coke bottles can be found nearly everywhere. From North
American supermarket isles, to Andean town corner stores, to European cafes and
Asian restaurants, to movie theaters throughout the globe. Even the most exotic
beach resorts will offer any number of internationally recognized brands of soft
drinks. Unfortunately, and as we saw in Chap. 3, one tragic fact of the industrial
world is that these same beaches are also destinations for millions of millions of
tons of ocean-born plastic waste. The message in every bottle as they wash up on the
shores of every continent is not a separate note romantically carried inside. Rather,
the message emerges in the aggregate; with each year and each ton of flotsam that
washes up or spirals endlessly in ocean gyres, the message is more pronounced.
These plastic bottles, whether intact or torn apart by entropy into smaller and smaller
particles, are the physical evidence of our collective design failure to safeguard our
own home.
4.5 Three Basic “Rs”
“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” The most popular dictum to have emerged from the
green movement reflects a principle that, for decades, has been accepted as reasonable and actionable by billions of people. The slogan itself may have crystalized
sometime after the first Earth Day, half a century ago, but the behaviors it describes
and codifies have been used either separately or together for millennia. Whenever
durable materials like stone or brick were carefully and skillfully salvaged and
repurposed for new structures or even when patiently saved scraps of cloth served
as feedstock to make quilts, value was recognized and material utility extended. It
is the mantra for millions of individual consumers today who, concerned about how
their own personal actions directly affect the course of future generations, carefully
consider purchasing choices. It echoes in the ears of anyone who pauses to consider
into which bin to drop some piece of plastic, the most ubiquitous, durable, and
increasingly problematic packaging material, after searching for the sometimes
nearly invisible “resin identification code.”
Under ideal conditions, habitually applying one or more of the three “Rs” in the
daily lives of the 7 billion plus people alive today can have a significant effect on
what, how, and how much we collectively take in and give back during our time on
the planet. If each person and corporation were to individually and consistently act
according to these tenets and perfectly closed industrial recycling systems operated
flawlessly, then effective, self-coordinated, global-scale resource management
would be possible. The US Congress passed the Resource Conservation and
Recovery Act in October of 1976 (US EPA, 2013) through which the three Rs
gained popularity. Since then, however, the total amount of resources being transformed has increased year over year. In spite of the aspirational goals set by the act,
while individuals may have marginally reduced their own domestic consumption,
4 Do Something: Mid-twentieth Century Developments
have adequately anticipated the actual effects of the sheer number of single-use
plastic bottles on the environment over time.
Today, plastic Coke bottles can be found nearly everywhere. From North
American supermarket isles, to Andean town corner stores, to European cafes and
Asian restaurants, to movie theaters throughout the globe. Even the most exotic
beach resorts will offer any number of internationally recognized brands of soft
drinks. Unfortunately, and as we saw in Chap. 3, one tragic fact of the industrial
world is that these same beaches are also destinations for millions of millions of
tons of ocean-born plastic waste. The message in every bottle as they wash up on the
shores of every continent is not a separate note romantically carried inside. Rather,
the message emerges in the aggregate; with each year and each ton of flotsam that
washes up or spirals endlessly in ocean gyres, the message is more pronounced.
These plastic bottles, whether intact or torn apart by entropy into smaller and smaller
particles, are the physical evidence of our collective design failure to safeguard our
own home.
4.5 Three Basic “Rs”
“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” The most popular dictum to have emerged from the
green movement reflects a principle that, for decades, has been accepted as reasonable and actionable by billions of people. The slogan itself may have crystalized
sometime after the first Earth Day, half a century ago, but the behaviors it describes
and codifies have been used either separately or together for millennia. Whenever
durable materials like stone or brick were carefully and skillfully salvaged and
repurposed for new structures or even when patiently saved scraps of cloth served
as feedstock to make quilts, value was recognized and material utility extended. It
is the mantra for millions of individual consumers today who, concerned about how
their own personal actions directly affect the course of future generations, carefully
consider purchasing choices. It echoes in the ears of anyone who pauses to consider
into which bin to drop some piece of plastic, the most ubiquitous, durable, and
increasingly problematic packaging material, after searching for the sometimes
nearly invisible “resin identification code.”
Under ideal conditions, habitually applying one or more of the three “Rs” in the
daily lives of the 7 billion plus people alive today can have a significant effect on
what, how, and how much we collectively take in and give back during our time on
the planet. If each person and corporation were to individually and consistently act
according to these tenets and perfectly closed industrial recycling systems operated
flawlessly, then effective, self-coordinated, global-scale resource management
would be possible. The US Congress passed the Resource Conservation and
Recovery Act in October of 1976 (US EPA, 2013) through which the three Rs
gained popularity. Since then, however, the total amount of resources being transformed has increased year over year. In spite of the aspirational goals set by the act,
while individuals may have marginally reduced their own domestic consumption,
4 Do Something: Mid-twentieth Century Developments