On Plastics
A Factual, Poetic, and Spiritual Look at the Plastics Predicament
excerpted from The Orgastic Future
In the greater picture, all the myriad ‘Stuff’ of Consumerism (and emanations and emissions) is made up of the selfsame morally neutral—or maybe one could say morally nascent—particles and atoms. And, mayhap, ultimately what Plotinus called the One.
From an ultimate perspective, even the most relatively noxious, virulent, and destructive phenomena mean no harm. And upon the prospect of death and oblivion—since all adheres by and is made up of what could be called love of the Universal Spirit after all—even the gaudiest of things may seem fond and sorely missed... just the forms, the wonderful vitalness, vibrance, and diversity of forms.
One might even miss and long for some of the pains and misfortunes that aped and hounded one. “[Life] I love you with all your harms… [And] if you have no more joy to give me—well then—there still remains your pain” (Lou Andreas-Salomé).
But yes, in a relative sense, when one gleans a remotely accurate sense of the scope, depth, and trajectory of the current and coming assails—it’s terrifying. One wishes to bury one’s head in the sand. Sleep under a warm blanket all night and day. Sleep for a thousand years, until it’s all over, like some fortunate Rip Van Winkle. Bury one’s head in a lover’s lap while they gently stroke one’s hair for eternity. Sit in a misty obfuscating steam room forever. Return to the warm oblivious womb.
* * *
So pervasive is the profusion of discarded Stuff, this all-encroaching concatenation of wholes, parts, particulates, seepages, and airborne exuviations—plastics, styrofoams, metallics, rubbers, oils, paints, acids, medicines, unguents, sprays, and other fluids, and the wasteproducts and effluvia that go into manufacturing and disposing of them, including large-scale chemical and radioactive wastes—that by now most of the food and water chain has become unavoidably contaminated. Yes: now: already.
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In the case of Plastics alone—maybe almost as much a danger as the blanket calamity of Climate-Change-cum-Global-Warming itself—by now so much of it in so many shapes and forms circulates about—solid, semi-solid, liquefied, airborne, gaseous—that it has laced and leached into most foods and liquids. It has been estimated that there’s more than a ton of plastic per every person on the planet (2,000 pounds or 907 kilos).
While it certainly has its upshots and positive uses, plastic of course is still manifoldly hazardous. And to such extent that its widespread manufacture cannot be justified.
To review for the unversed and neophyte: Plastics are made from chemically refined ‘fossil fuels.’ Crude oil. Coal. Natural gas. These could be called ‘dirty fuels,’ for they are essentially the Earth’s ordure and flatulence, the ingestion or inhalation of which even in their raw form is inimical—for godsake, one can tell just by looking at and sniffing them. Thus basing the vast majority of civilization’s energy production on them is perhaps one of the greatest, if not singlemost feats of ignorance, folly, and greed in history.
We’re going to get a little technical here for a bit. The extraction, refinement, use, and destruction of fossil fuels—raw, blended, or made into materials such as plastic—produces large amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other ‘greenhouse gases,’ and sulfur dioxide and other ‘NMVOCs,’ harmful to humans and most life on Earth. Like the emissions of a tainted candle melting a hollow snow globe from inside, they heat the planet, dissolve its protecting ozone layer, and clog the air.
As well as chemical byproducts and vapors, such as coal ash, boiler slag, farflung airborne mercury, and ‘flue-gas desulphurization products,’ containing toxicants like arsenic, lead, chromium, ‘dioxins,’ ‘PAHs,’ and uranium and thorium more radioactive than some kinds of nuclear waste—some of which, due to greed, stupidity, or lack of resources, isn’t well regulated and lies about exposed and dispersing.
Most (or all) plastics have a host of adverse health effects when absorbed or ingested. Further, many are infused or coated with deleterious chemicals: binding agents, flame retardants, liquid and stain repellents, etc. They release toxins when burned, heated, abraded, broken, simply jostled through regular use, or degrading. They take anywhere from hundreds of years to untold eons to decompose. And the kicker: rather than biodegrading—ie, being consumed beneficially by microorganisms—they just keep dispersing into smaller and smaller unprocessable bits.
As of now most tap water, and a lot of bottled water, contains plastic microfibers. Not to mention other hard-to-filter or yet-unfilterable contaminants, such as leached plasticizers like ‘phthalates,’ flame-retarding ‘perfluorinated compounds’ and other chemicals, and traces of painkillers, birth control, antibiotics, antidepressants, and other medications. Neither home water-filtration systems, nor even the best industrial ones, are yet capable of detecting and filtering out some of these contaminants.
Once again for the uninitiated, which right now many probably are in this subject: plastic microfibers are tiny fibers, large enough to be visible to the eye, or as small as half a red blood cell, coming mostly from synthetic (ie, plastic-infused) clothing and footwear, baggage, fabrics, carpets, and turfs. Recently it’s been estimated that a single fleece jacket can release up to 250,000 in one wash. Nowadays, due to lower cost and time of production, plus superior breathability, stretch, ‘water-wickingness,’ and sometimes durability, more than three-fifths of all of these types of items are partly or wholly synthetic.
The more one investigates and discovers the fuller realities and specifics, the scarier and more desperate the overall environmental situation seems. Ironically—and a little morbidly—on the psychic-creative plane, one can marvel at the diversity and strikingness of these forms. And it can be fun, even exuberant, to describe and catalogue them.
Ocean life has become so suffused with microplastics that even small fish, like herring, anchovy, and sardines, and minute organisms, like shrimp, krill, and zooplankton, and deep-dwelling ones, like sea polyps, sea cucumbers, and (again) myriad plankton, and seemingly impervious ones, like oysters, clams, mussels, scallops, barnacles, and even seaweeds (one of the healthiest foods on the planet, with various medicinal uses), have them in their systems. Ironically, some of which filter into the ocean from the very synthetic buoys, nets, ropes, and fishing wire—ostensibly a cheaper, more convenient alternative to the natural fibers of yore—used to catch them for consumption. Even virtually all sea salt is now infused with microplastics. It’s true. Check it out, yo.
These include: Dissolved particles from larger plastics. Microbeads: the brunt of which are used as exfoliators and decoratives in hygiene and cosmetic products. “Colored microspheres add visual appeal” (Cosmetics & Toiletries Magazine). Polystyrene beads: sometimes used in stuffed animals, cushions, and some furniture, filled into hollow walls as insulation (!), and dumped into septic systems and latrine pits to ward off mosquitoes (!) The aforementioned microfibers: which simply shed off of synthetic fabrics, such as polyester and nylon, sportswear, jackets, cold weather wear, footwear, luggage, backpacks, bags, hiking and camping wear, carpeting, astroturf, artificial grass, and so on through normal use, as a dog or cat’s fur might. And again, today the majority of all such items are synthetic.
Plastic flakes, chips, and dust: most of which come from flaking and degrading paints (most contemporary paints, such as latex and acrylic, are essentially liquid plastic in metal buckets, and indeed often in plastic ones: plasticky goop in plastic shells); the dust that flies off car and other vehicles’ tires as they wear down and erode; and degrading building siding, vinyl flooring, and other construction materials, most of which are also plastic nowadays. ‘Nurdles’: small plastic pellets or beads melted to make a wide variety of common plastic objects. ‘Festive glitter’: you know, glitter thrown at parties and carnivals, adorning holiday products, and used in flashy cosmetics and holiday makeups. And finally, dissolved plastic-derived contaminants, like ‘BPA,’ ‘PS Oligomer,’ and ‘Acrylamide.’
Just as certain current-junctures on the surfaces of oceans have become cesspools for larger and more visible plastics, the deep parts of oceans have become sinkholes for microplastics, which permeate and impregnate the smallest, most ubiquitous, and fundamental creatures along the submarine food chain. Simultaneously, more and more microfibers, microplastics, and plastic dusts float about and cling to surfaces, coating and being ingested by land and air animals.
Withal, as a magnet attracts metal shavings, microplastics easily accumulate and bind with harmful chemicals and pollutants, even bacteria, viruses, and radionuclides. Pesticides, flame retardants, divers ‘PCFs,’ ‘organatonins,’ mercury (pulverized, vaporized, methylated), heavy metals. E. Coli, B. Cereus, S. Maltophilia. Pollen and other allergens. Dengue, Zika, Elizabethkingia. Radioactive dust, gases, wastewater particles. Etc.
As motes, as microscopic fibers, as pulverized dust, they swirl about—well, everywhere—collecting and infusing with myriad human-made and organic pollutants and pathogens, entering people’s systems via direct absorption or ingestion, or ingestion of animals and plants that have indubitably bioaccumulated and been debilitated by them, tap and bottled water and other liquids, and processed foods. Preliminary research, very long overdue, shows that fine plastic particles can cross cell membranes, the blood-brain barrier, and placenta.
Plastic only really started to be mass-produced in the 1930s. And really only on a wider scale in the 40s, around World War II. And why—why this mass overproduction? Like most large-scale ‘business’ enterprises since the Industrial Revolution (and many in history since the advent of surpluses, numerical calculation, and currency), yes, partly out of novelty, excitement, and aesthetic appeal. Possibly partly out of altruism, of bettering the human’s condition. Partly out of ignorance of ramifications and consequences, ie, plain stupidity.
But predominately out of egoism: sheer greed; pleasure, satisfaction, or at least willful resignation and blindness to exploiting the other fellow (or the whole of life).
Which incidentally itself stems from clinging to an illusory sense of a permanent self— identified with and constantly seeming inflated or deflated by the acquisition and loss of possessions and ostensible power over others—as a false defense against the subconscious, tightly-clad, repressed fear of ‘death’ and oblivion, of ego loss—but we won’t get into this further right now.
Yes, predominately through Greed and callous domination at others’ expense. Ego run wild, amok; grossly selfish, perverse, mad. And America, epicenter of Capitalism–Consumerism, Individualism, and Relativism during the last several centuries, all of which heightened to a pitch in the 20th and early 21st, especially from the 1970s, naturally has been the birthplace, catalyst, or major disseminator of the majority. It’s true. Once again: check it out.
People got along perfectly fine before the widespread use of plastics. More mindfully—and eminently more sustainably. Most foodstuffs were wrapped in paper, which was reused to pack lunches, or burned as tinder. Most containers were made of glass, metal, wood, or cardboard. They were reused or genuinely recycled. Though heavier than plastics, they are biodegradable and environmentally beneficial or at least innocuous.
People would shop for groceries more frequently; thus more foods were farm and locally grown. Many would place their orders to a grocery by phone, and a delivery person would make rounds delivering the orders in cardboard boxes. When people shopped themselves, they would carry around canvas and cloth bags.
Hospitals would use actual tableware, cutlery, and glassware. And they would employ some persons in charge of cleaning them, with no spread of bacteria or ill effects upon the patients. And actually, if carried out properly, this might be more sanitary than the incessant hourly stream of disposable plastics issuing from them today—meals comprised of two-thirds packaging for every modicum of food, and five styrofoam cups per patient per hour—no one has really studied the question.
Ditto for airlines, which until the 50s served meals on real china with real silverware. Meanwhile last year airlines produced about 4 to 5 million tons of plastic waste, most of which went to landfills or incineration—the weight of about 2 to 2.5 million cars. This number is projected to double over the next 15 years.
Of course, plastic had to be invented—in all probability the equivalent is invented by many developed species around this stage in their development on many planets the universe over. And certainly the substance is helpful, and probably indispensable, in certain vehicles, such as spaceships, airplanes, and boats, and appliances, technological items, and manufacturing processes. But beyond this, it’s extremely extraneous, even diabolical.
Disseminated, entrenched, and impregnated in virtually every product and process—via negligent, discinct, complacent, reckless, or sadistic greed. Advertised, publicized, marketed, indoctrinated, instrumentally conditioned, and inculcated—via principles of Immediate Disposability and Planned Obsolescence. By Suits and Mad Men uttering: There Will Be Blood! There Will Be Blood!
Sure, before common use of plastic, some things were somewhat less convenient, and took more time. And there were some drawbacks. But the benefits of attentiveness, and hospitability to flora, fauna, other humans, and the whole planet, far outweighed these.
Only 80 or 90 years—within the possible span of one human lifetime, and no time at all, less than the faintest glimmer, within the scope of the 4.54 billion year old planet—and how much plastic has been manufactured, scattered, embedded, splintered, and pulverized throughout the Earth (and more recently outer space). Staggering.
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Click the play button above to listen to a narrated version of the following section
And in spite of the copious mounting warnings and catastrophes of the last fifty years (and uncountable tears), the output keeps escalating unabated. More plastic has been produced in the last 10 years than in the whole of the 20th century. Scientists have estimated that if production continues just at this rate, by 2050 there will be more plastics in the oceans by volume than there are fish today…
Shopping bags. Produce bags. Potato chip bags. Candy wrappers. (Totally unnecessary) plastic and styrofoam packaging for vegetables and fruits. Mesh produce and seafood bags. Clingwrap. Condiment packets. Single-serve dairy creamers. Butter packets. Utensils. Straws. Cosmetics. Chapstick. Q-tips. Dental floss. Disposable razors. Exfoliating nanobeads. Shower curtains. Cleaning sponges. Plant pots and feeders. Plastic turf clods. Doggy poop bags. Synthetic apparel. Pantyhose. Luggage. Backpacks. Bags. Clothing tags. Electronics components. Computer and tech parts. Disposable cameras (!) Toys and knickknacks. Thumbtacks. Tape. Glues. Contact lenses. Pill bottles. Syringes. Medical tubings. Pens. Lighters. Glowsticks. “Silly string.” Condoms. Tampons. Maxi pads. Diapers. Dental fillings—yes, plastic amalgams with BPA have even been used in fillings for the last 15 years. Etcetera. All of which of course proverbially only scratches the surface.
Suffusing seas… lakes, rivers, streams… abutments, jetties, banks… shorelines, gulfs… swamps, lagoons… inlets, estuaries… tidepools, mud puddles… canals… shallows… stagnant, tepid, turbid… drying out, lukewarm, boiling… torpid, inert, hypnotic… sereing, caking, roiling…
And then all the other rusting, moldering artefacts of humankind: tin cans, tires, rusted engines, propellers, wheels, pistons, machinery, weaponry, handguns, ruins of buildings and architectures, fragments of monuments and statues, fading mottled artworks—vapid and profound alike, plutonium rods, slicks and droplets of oils, chemicals, tainted biofilms…
Swirling about in arrays of decomposition, crusted and jeweled barnacles coating their bellies, marine life feasting on them ruinously, in the shivering gelid waters. Languid and resting, settling into, merging with the sopified soil. Markers of an inventive, industrious, intrepid, cruel, fatuous, and doomed civilization…
And I beheld when they had opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood. And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth its untimely figs, when it is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
And the kings and queens of the earth, and the great persons, and the rich persons, and the chief captains, and the mighty persons, and every bondperson, and every free person, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains. And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Them that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great Day Of Wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away
—Shelley
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Another kicker: recently researchers confirmed that, in addition to chemicals, plastic actually releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as it degrades. Which makes sense after all: it’s mostly made of oil. How this wasn’t investigated earlier is beyond me. The merchants of industry either deny it or won’t comment. Read: they’ve known for decades, maybe always.
Another? As it turns out, they never thought recycling viable. Suspected not more than 5 or 10 percent of plastics could ever be. And popularized the smokescreen to hoodwink individuals into taking personal responsibility for a fundamentally systemic scourge of their own advent.
Maybe 20, even 10 years ago, concerted individual efforts could have made a significant difference in stemming this tide—but we are past this point. There is so much plastic abounding, so established and routine is it to make virtually every item, container, packaging, and wrapping, every appliance, abode and furnishing, medical accoutrement and mask with it, to utilize it in every amenity and industrial process, that at this point, tragically, individual effort is almost—though not quite—tantamount to shooting a bow and arrow at a hurricane. Proverbially pissing into the wind.
There is plastic
Plastic in everything
That’s how the blight gets in
—Ah god, spare me—
Anywhere one sits, plastic is strewn about and caked into the landscape. One leaves one’s bike chained on the street for half an hour, and invariably some louts leave plastic bottles or containers in the crate. (Admittedly, this speaks more to today’s propensity for littering than anything else. Just wanted to get this off my chest. Those rascals!) Plastics have found their own way, only via wind and water, to the glacial surfaces and deepest depths of the remotest Arctic.
These days it’s virtually impossible for an individual to live their life without buying plastics, and daresay impossible without acquiring or using them. And even if they’re doggedly committed and insane enough to try, if they don’t drop out from the economic system completely and live in a cave in some warm clime, they’re still surrounded by tidal waves, jetsprays, and mists of it, and must rely on some of it in their scavenging.
Campaigns? The liberal nonprofit activist organizations that dot the landscape here and there like odd dandelions in an exhausted parking lot. Surely they make some progress—but gradually, like firefighters trying to put out a forest-wide conflagration with mere barrels and buckets, are being thwarted; like a Sisyphus pushing a boulder uphill that grows heavier the farther he ascends, enervated; like marathon runners made to run an insurmountable distance without any water, reduced.
Just those organizations campaigning to ban plastic retail and grocery bags in towns, cities, and states (forget putting a negligible 5 or 10 cent surcharge on them, which in practice few care about or even notice)—in a sane, lucid, and kind civilization, this should have happened worldwide decades ago, or rather never become a problem at all.
Most of the inventors, manufacturers, purveyors, and stockers of plastic bags, explicitly or implicitly, knew many of their detrimental effects on nature, wildlife, and the sightscape. The same with the actors of most other branches of plastics manufacturing.
At this point we are so far past localized campaigns for plastic bag bans it’s laughable. Certainly it would be a significant step—but if all were banned today, so many already exist, and so much plastic keeps being produced, that it would be like chipping off the corner of an iceberg.
* * *
And meanwhile, so many people, having grown up with Consumerism, with its ethos of immediate disposability and frequent upgrading, as the prevailing system, otherwise thoughtful, considerate, and nature-loving, are so habituated and sightless in this area that they don’t think twice about drinking a few gulps from a plastic bottle or styrofoam cup and tossing it into the trash straightway.
Whereas some Westerner from, say, several centuries ago, or a tribesperson, would likely be confounded. ‘Why isn’t the object being saved for future use? How can it just be thrown on the landscape thoughtlessly, to sit unsightly and poorly effect the natural world, plants and animals, other people, the nature spirits, the Great Chain of Being?... What is it made of? How long will it remain? What effects might it have?... Why are we using materials that take hundreds and thousands of years to break down to use once and throw away? And to boot, that in so doing poison nature?!’
Ironically most organic foods are packaged in plastic—by now the irony here should be clear.
In so many domains obviously detrimental have the machinations and advertorial brainwashings of Consumerism blinded people. ‘What? You mean to say—pork, veal, venison, these are actually executed animals? You’re kidding!... What of Soylent Green?’
* * *
What will it take for enough people, a critical mass, to wake up and a large-scale movement to happen? Wide-ranging cataclysms, near-Apocalypse? Or will nothing reverse the tide? Are we too irrevocably brainwashed by the Consumerist system? Are the evolutionarily older parts of our brains, and even our prefrontal cortexes, just too bygone and maladapted to the exponentially changing conditions of the 21st century for us to be widely judicious, compassionate, responsible, and wise? And humanity’s fate is to be flotsam, shorn against the ruins?
One might say cavalierly: but this is the fate of all things anyway. Yet, what a shame for a run so promising—of some 350,000 years, or if one considers the ‘archaic’ and ‘proto’ ancestors ‘modern humans’ developed and branched off from, millions—that in spite of teeming horror, self-inflicted suffering, and wastefulness, particularly in the last ten millennia or so—also yielded so many beauteous artefacts, amazing artworks, magnificent architectures, inspiring attitudes, and acts of worth, to be snuffed out so obtusely and crassly. And maybe at the cusp of an evolutionary transition into something Finer. Maybe.
An absurd end. A black mirror. A whimper, not a bang. Although, yes: a bang for the buck. ‘Well, the world’s in ruins, and humanity’s decimated. But for one glorious moment in time, we sure turned a lot of profits for our shareholders!’
* * *
And indeed, when all is said and done, when all is buried and disintegrated, when the buildings, bridges, and tunnels have crumbled; when the businesspersons’ enterprises and empires have long since gone out of business, or been coopted and remade; when the new inventions long outmoded and assimilated; when the politicians long past flapping their lips and now fertilizer in empty graves; when theorems incorporated and far surpassed—what are humanity’s most vital and enduring contributions, which it can be proudest of and might like to show other cognizant species in the Universe?
These must be its deepest and most arresting artworks. Its profoundest philosophies. What could be called its genuine ‘spiritual practices.’ And in fact its secret noblest feelings, thoughts, and deeds. For all seems to aspire towards luminosity and rarefication.
“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being” (Carl Jung).
* * *
And in spite of all this, in spite of the frightful climate, is it possible to energetically say ‘Yes’ to life, to all of it? To utter an affirmative heroic yelp, of acceptance, even enthusiasm? And do the best and most with what one has—even if all one has is leagues of loneliness and seas of suffering. And thereby make of life an art and masterpiece?
Is it possible in the darkest, most inhospitable circumstances? What kind of mindset and awakedness, what insight into some crazy secret of life, makes for such a seemingly radical comportment? And what would this mean: what attitude, what morality? And why should a human of this place-and-time be capable of, have evolutionarily developed such a capacity?
One can never be sure, but I suspect it would mean a kind of equanimity. A certain exuberance. And a kindness and situational based ethics, founded not only on a deep rational understanding but also feeling of the intrinsic interconnectedness, interreliance, and transience of all things. And: the Ineffable from which it all springs. ‘The peace that passes all understanding.’
This essay is culled from The Orgastic Future, a work of poetic nonfiction about the interconnectedness and depths of consumerism, plastic pollution, climate change, plague, runaway ego, and other threats facing the planet. In writing the book the author meticulously researched the science and history based parts—particularly the section dealing with plastic pollution. Previously they had worked for several years in the Environmental Section of a grant-giving philanthropic foundation, where they were exposed to a lot of research in the areas of Environment and Health, which also informed their knowledge.
