Washington twaddle: watch out kids… there’s plastic about

The Washington Post’s children’s section, Kids Post, has just run an item called ‘Keeping track of plastics: Start a journal’.

Be nice to the planet or the puppy dies...

“Keep track of every piece of plastic you use in one day. At the end of the day, try to figure out if you can reduce your use of plastics,” writes the newspaper. What it doesn’t then go on to say is “and then perform a lifecycle analysis in order to check if the alternatives are any better for the environment”.

It’s easy to demonise plastics but it doesn’t make any sense on any level – economic, environmental or practical.

Of course, what this is really all about is waste management – some people dispose of some things in an irresponsible way… and that can include plastic. To attack the material itself is barmy.

So in order to present a fair and balanced view of the alternatives to Satan very own environment-destroying effluent [plastic] I’ve done some serious research [made stuff up]. Here are my findings…

Glass – it breaks! It’s sharp! Sharp stuff can kill puppies! Glass is therefore bad…

Paper – trees die to make it! Trees and nice – you can hug them! But not if they’ve been pulped to make paper for the Washington Post. Paper is therefore evil…

Metal – it’s used to make knives and guns! Gasp! Metal must therefore be really, really bad…

By comparison plastics are suddenly starting to look pretty innocuous. Maybe, just maybe, plastics aren’t really that bad after all. Maybe the current moral panic about environmental enemy number one is just a load of old twaddle after all.

[ Back ]

Send us your thoughts on this blog