Guilt Free Littering
Friends, this is from The Onion. It is SATIRE; don’t go getting all worked up!
New Eco-Friendly Packaging Triggers Boom In Guilt-Free Littering
July 21, 2007 | Issue 43•29
ROCKFORD, IL—Nick Sundin used to be neurotic about littering. The 37-year-old pediatrician admits he kept trash bags in his car, and would even pick up and throw away garbage he found on the street. Since boyhood, Sundin said, he was keenly attuned to the environmental degradation littering caused, an attitude triggered by the famous Keep America Beautiful “Crying Indian” public service announcement he saw on television as a young man.
Not anymore.
“These ‘eco’ products are amazing—they’ve totally changed my life,” Sundin said. “Now, I just toss my used Seventh Generation–brand paper plates out the car window, knowing they’ll soon be absorbed into the earth.”
The growing “green” trend in product packaging, which emphasizes the use of recycled, biodegradable post-consumer paper-based materials and relies less on petroleum-derived polymers like styrofoam, has unleashed a spontaneous trashing of sidewalks, roadsides, and pristine wilderness by gratified consumers. Though some environmentalists and scientists were caught off guard by the movement, experts say it is here to stay.
“The stigma attached to littering is at long last being put to rest,” industry analyst Tom Schneider said. “As long as manufacturers are packaging their goods in unbleached paper and biodegradable, cornstarch-based plastics, more and more consumers will discard their refuse wherever they please, knowing it will safely decompose within 10 to 20 years. Call it the ‘New Compost.'”
From The Onion; click here to read the entire article.
My comment: What is so sad, is that this looks like places in Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, where people have just dumped stuff without any regard to the environment.
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First, you just gotta love the Onion.
I’ve seen similar dumping sites stateside while on cartrips – and it always makes me sad. Yet, I recall one evening several years ago Mariner Man and I were tooling down an Arizona backroad, at dusk, and I became entranced at ALL THE SPARKLES
OOPS – HIT SUBMIT! to continue…
…ALL THE SPARKLES on both sides of the road. I thought, gee, the soil must be loaded with some sort of mica – how pretty! Then, much to my dismay, realized it was miles upon miles of broken beer bottles that had been tossed from vehicles along the road. We’ve taken the same road several more times, both in day and evening – in daytime it is NOT so pretty. And although in the dusk it is oddly beautiful, knowing what the source is also makes one Really Nervous about the drivers on the road…. (yeah, lots of little crosses along the roadside, too….).
Interesting but ugly.
So 10-20 yrs worth of garbage. That’d be a pile higher than a sequoia don’t you think? By the time they decompose, it would have ruined some animal’s habitat. I’m no pessimist, I’m just pointing out that there’s another side to the coin.
Hey R, it’s satire, remember? In my state, Washington, we have mandatory recycling, which can be annoying but we all believe it is a must. Newspapers, glass, different grades of plastic, and aluminum all has to be sorted into separate bins, and some items, like paint cans, have to be taken to special hazardous waste dumps. It takes time, but it’s worth it. Would that we could get this going in Kuwait!