Diamond Dogs Racing

I recently heard on NPR that America uses 1.2 million plastic bottles a day because of our obsession with bottled water. Plastic – bottled forms or those infamous plastic bags we get at our favorite stores – are all made from petroleum. And Styrofoam – that’s even worse. It takes something like 4 billion years for one Styrofoam cup to decompose naturally, and burning it releases various forms or carbon into the air, which turns into greenhouse gasses, which is responsible for Ozone depletion, global warming, etc. etc. You see where I’m going with this. A huge percentage of this stuff ends up in landfills. (Without a good reference, if I had to guess, I’d guess probably about 90% of it ends up in landfills.) But my point of reference might be skewed by this past week. Here’s why.

During the course of this five day training, we were bombarded with beverages in plastic bottles, mostly bottled water, but also Styrofoam cups for coffee and countless cans of soda. Mindful of the waste of these products, I took every bottle I used and saved them (in a plastic bag from Target, ironically) all week, so by the end of the week, I had accumulated a full bag. Determined to find someplace to recycle it, I toted the red and white bag down to the check out counter at the hotel on Friday morning.

“Do you have a place to recycle this,” I asked the attendant.

“No, we do not,” he responded.

Up in the room, there was a sign posted next to the towel rack in the bathroom that said something about their being concerned about conserving water and to please reuse the towels. While water conservation is a problem, so is recycling plastic bottles!

So I lugged the bag with me on the 45 mile drive to the Boston Logan airport, certain there would be containers set aside specifically for this purpose there. But all I found was trash cans.

I stopped by a Starbucks. They market themselves as eco-friendly and mindful of the impact of waste on the environment. On the side of every cup holder is written, “ Starbucks is committed to reducing our environmental impact through increased use of post-consumer recycled materials. Help us help the planet.” Certainly, they would be sympathetic to my plight.

I approached the girl behind the counter. She wore Muslim clothing, complete with burka, and spoke broken English.

“Do you recycle?” I asked and held up the bag for her to see.

“Yes,” she replied. And for a moment, I was relieved. Then she said, “Trash? There are trash cans out there,” and she pointed out into the airport.

“No,” I corrected. “This isn’t trash. It’s recyclable.”

She looked puzzled. “No, we don’t do that here.”

Furious, I sat down to pull up my blog, my favorite place to spout off. Although I was connected to the Airport’s WiFi, I was told I had to pay a one-time fee of $7.95. I disconnected and called my husband. He then informed me that if I tried to get on the plane with a bag full of empty plastic bottles, it would be cause for being searched extensively, padded down, etc and that I should give up and throw the bag in the trash. I finally succumbed, out of fear of being strip searched or labeled and eco-terrorist.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY!!!???!!!???

In every instance, when I asked someone to dispose of the plastic properly, I was looked at as if

I had three heads and spoke Martian. Why are we so wasteful? Do we think we are invincible, capable of outliving our resources? I sat in the airport watching all the consumers walking around with their bottles of beverages, and thought about how every single one of them would end up in a landfill. That’s a lot, when you consider I was in a huge metropolitan area in an international airport.

It is things like this that make me ashamed to be part of this culture. We are gluttonous, live way beyond our means, eat too much, drink too much, live to excess and yet our attitude is such that we think we’ll live forever. I am guilty of this gluttony too (I’m in debt up to my eyeballs), but damnit! Things have to change!

I can’t wait to get on the plane, go home and see my dogs and my family, build my dog box and head for the U.P.