Humans are a piece of work

What a piece of work is a man, How noble in
Reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving
how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel!
                                                Hamlet, Prince of Denmark; Act II, Scene ii

I suspect that when Hamlet said this he had his tongue in his cheek. he did go on to say that 'Man delights not me'.


Man doesn't delight me very much at the moment either. Or woman.  After all, how could a creature ‘noble in reason’ and ‘infinite in faculties’ be responsible for one of the worst best inventions ever?

I’m talking about plastic. Check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en4XzfR0FE8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc6LvdsyJ4U&feature=related

These are just two random examples of the media coverage given to what has been dubbed the ‘Pacific Trash Vortex’. Developed counties throwawaythrowawaythrowaway, it all swirls into the sea, gets sucked into ocean currents and eventually ends up in the mid-Pacific where it has apparently formed an ocean-going rubbish dump which all the media seem to agree is ‘twice the size of Texas’.

I certainly agree that man is ‘a piece of work’ but I can’t praise the ‘noble reason’ of any species of animal that can discard so thoughtlessly.
We’ve had plastic for a surprisingly long time. Alexander Parks patented a plastic material parkesine (made from plant components) in Birmingham in 1856 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#History ), and the first affordable synthetic plastic was invented by Leo Hendrick Baekeland in 1907 ( ibid ). After that I can just imagine what happened. People got more wealthy (in certain parts of the world) new technologies blossomed, disposable became the new black and soon we thought nothing of walking to a store and buying 300ml of drinkable liquid in a container that we could take away and then discard. What decadence! What excessive behaviour! And how tempting it must have been to do after the depression and World War II when people had been scraping and recycling and living on stingily doled out ration cards.

Of course throwing things away without much thought is exactly what I do and it’s the culture I’ve been brought up in.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve got all the residents of my flat (the Boyfriend the Flatmate and me) to write down every time they throw something out. I’ve been doing the same. After a couple of days of this two things became very clear:

1)       We throw out a lot

2)       My survey was going to be useless in quantitative terms: we could not remember to write down every time we discarded something.

Well? Why would we? Do you think you could write down every time you scratched your ear in a day or every time you looked at your watch? One thing doing this taught me about myself is that discarding things is so ingrained I often don’t notice I’m doing it. The Flatmate is a bit more ecologically evolved than I am, but even so, I know there are a number of things that didn’t get recorded. Paper towels for instance. Dental floss. Toilet rolls. Little bits of paper like receipts and packaging bits.

Here is what we had on our list:


<><><><> <> <><><><> <><><><><> <>

Landfill	Recycling
Hummus container (plastic)	Wine bottle
Dental floss (lots of this didn’t get written down)	Paper catalogue
10 pages of paper	Toilet rolls
Plum stone	Cardboard packaging
Fruit stones	Tin can
Pumpkin scraps	Egg carton
Pawpaw seeds	Yogurt carton
Half a lemon	Documents
x1 bread bag (plastic)	Milk carton
Bread bag tie	Muesli Bar box
x2 plastic bags	Balsamic vinegar bottle
Beetroot peel	Toothpaste box
x2 contact lenses cases	Baked bean tin
Halloumi packet	X3 Shampoo bottles
Broccoli skins	Milk bottles
Avocado skins	Cardboard
Plastic (unspecified)	Soup tin
X2 chicken bones	Margarine packet
Plastic bag	Plastic bottle
Bread bag (plastic)	Weetbix packet (cardboard)
Butter shield (paper)	Custard carton (cardboard)
Feta cheese packaging (plastic)	Paper bag
Plastic bag	Egg carton
Smoked salmon packaging (plastic	Cardboard box
Leftover salmon	Juice bottle
Weetbix plastic
X5 eggshells
Pasta packet (plastic)
Sour cream packet
Plastic salad bag (with some expired salad inside)
Old newspapers in plastic
Plastic bag
Potato peel
Egg shell
Pear core
Rotten avocado
Rotten tomato
Coffee packaging
Yoghurt top
Salad bag
Cucumber wrap (plastic)
Orange peel
Feta cheese packet
x2 plastic bags
Egg shell
Coffee grounds
Paper towel
Meat packaging
X2 biscuit packages
Bread bag
Coffee grounds
x1 teabag
Cork
Brown paper bag
Paper towel
Plastic bag
Balsamic vinegar seal
x1 paper towel
Pineapple skin
x3 teabags
Paper towel
Pawpaw skin and seeds
Glad wrap
Ball of dough
x2 plastic bags
Paper mushroom bag
Chicken packaging
Onion skin
Plastic bag
Plastic bag
Olive pits
Chicken bones
x4 eggshells
Lemon rind
Sticking plaster
Plastic bag
Unloved weetbix leftovers
Mandarin peel
Plum stone
Face mask packet
Turkey packet
Glad wrap
Rice packet (with some rice inside)
Pasta packet (plastic)
Lentil packet (plastic)
Barley packet (plastic)

 There are several important things to note here:

1)       The landfill list is a hell of a lot longer than the recycling

2)       I’ve made the landfill column pretty colours.

Here’s what the colours stand for:

	This should have been recycled – go back three spaces!
	If we had compost it could have gone here. Fail.
	There is no hope for this waste product. It should not be on the market. It should not exist. It should be made illegal. It will inevitably end up in some landfill not breaking down and poisoning small animals. Archeologists in future times will dig it up and use it as evidence that past civilisations had no self-respect and were all-round filthy delinquents.

THE BLUE

Problem:
The blue column is where we have been careless. I think the reason for this is that our recycling lives outside. For those little things it often seems too far to walk.

Solution:

We need to have a recycling bin in the kitchen.

THE GREEN
Problem: We have nowhere to put compost so we don’t. We have a large concrete courtyard that is common space to all four flats in the building and it’s not so good for composting or composting’s close relative, gardening.

Solution: Try to find some sort of composting option that will fit in our outdoor area. I hear there may be community gardens in Grafton, so I’ll try and look those up. Perhaps if we start composting in our arid communal concrete patch the neighbours will join us??



THE PINK


Problem: Nothing to do with this stuff but throw it out

Solution: Don’t use it. Not unless you have to.



This could be hard.

But I might try to use my supposed ‘infinite faculties’ to come up with something of a solution . . .

I know! I will bring death to the plastic bag. This would be appropriate, since the plastic bag is very good at bringing death to others.