http://www.hercircleezine.com/2012/01/26/plastic-a-toxic-love-story/
COPYRIGHT DOUG LEE HTTP://WWW.GEOGRAPH.ORG.UK/REUSE.PHP?ID=798994
PLASTIC: A TOXIC LOVE STORY by Susan Freinkel (Houghton Mifflin, 2011) is a compelling nonfiction look at our relationship to plastic. Ms. Freinkel takes a look at plastic in our lives through specific items, such as Frisbees®, combs, the ubiquitous plastic bag, lawn furniture and disposable lighters. She uses literary and popular culture references throughout the book to make it easy to relate to and understand the technical information she presents about the various kinds of plastic that exist and our uneasy relationship with them.
We love plastic when it makes blood donation possible, or Kevlar for helmets. We hate it when we see things like “beach whistles” (discarded plastic tampon applicators) next to our blankets when we’re relaxing at the shore. We are happy that plastics make pacemakers possible or countertops that are nearly indestructible. We bemoan their contribution to the death of the albatross or when their chemicals are found in breast milk and baby bottles.
In an effort to avoid plastics, we sometimes use alternatives that are far more environmentally hazardous. While your paper grocery bag can be re-used, eventually it needs to be recycled and/or can breakdown without causing harm to the environment, and it’s production is far more costly in terms of natural resources and environmental impact at its production origin. The energy, trees, chemicals and then fuel it takes to make and transport heavy paper bags causes more environmental harm or that term “carbon footprint” than a plastic grocery bag. Thus, while we lament those plastic bags blowing across highways and have heavy hearts when we see them entrap ocean animals, we need to realize the more “natural” alternative (paper) is really no better.
What Ms. Freinkel’s book did for me is to make me very aware of the types of plastic I use every day and the presence of plastic, for better and worse, in my life. Her approach is also livable. She does not prescribe a particular way of living for us, admonishing us for whatever plastics we use. Rather, she is even-handed and asks us to think for ourselves about what we bring into our homes, what we support in community campaigns for or against plastics and what we dispose of and how we dispose of it. While not preachy in any way, the author brings the issues from the personal to the global as we examine ways in which manufacturers and businesses ship plastic pellets and create resins for the products we use. We see plastic at every level of our society and lives.
Freinkel discusses the number of women involved in the plastics industry—an incredibly interesting issue. In China, mostly women work in the factories where plastic products are made and/or resins are produced. Some are quite young, and others leave their families behind for much of the year to work for a certain number of months making seasonal products like Frisbees® or those plastic chairs found everywhere across the United States. It illustrates that our consumption of plastic products is tied to a lot more than just our own use or to even environmental concerns. If we all stopped purchasing Frisbees® and those green and white lawn chairs, many women would lose the ability to support families that they’ve found in this industry. Whether the conditions in which they work or the wages they’re paid are fair and equitable are another story, yet Freinkel’s book asks us to consider every aspect of our decisions about what to buy or not buy where plastics are concerned. I learned a lot reading her book and I continue to think about all of the issues—the larger picture—of plastics long since closing the last page of the book.
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