A Wonder Material You Cant Get Rid Of

Here are some excerpts from a news segment called "A Wonder Material You Can't Get Rid Of" from CBS Sunday Morning (aired 7-24-07).
You can view the program on their website.


"Each of us generates more than 1,600 pounds of garbage every year. That's more trash per person than any other nation on Earth. Much of it comes from plastic bags, plastic water bottles and plastic packaging. As some see it, our love affair with plastic has turned us into a throwaway society. The plastic heads straight to landfills, where it stays for years and years and years.

It wasn't always like this.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, when it came to trash, practically nothing went to waste. Everything from rags to scrap metal to manure found a second use. Recycling was truly the American way, says Heather Rogers, author of "Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage."

"Disposability and the way that we dispose is learned — a learned behavior," she said. "We've had to be taught how to do that."

Rogers argues that today's attitudes towards trash took root in the postwar boom, when plastics were promoted as a new wonder-material: cheap, versatile and disposable.

"One of the first disposable plastic items was a rigid plastic cup that was dispensed in vending machines that sold coffee and hot chocolate," she said. "And after people consumed their drink, they had this cup left over that they clearly recognized could be re-used. And a discussion erupted in the plastics industry trade press about, 'How do we convince consumers that this product that clearly can be re-used is garbage?'"

Recently, the plastics industry has come under pressure to boost the relatively low percentage of plastic recycling. While close to three-quarters of cardboard boxes and nearly half of aluminum cans find new uses, only about a quarter of plastic bottles — and just 5 percent of plastic bags — get recycled...................................

"One out of every three servings of water now comes from a bottle in the United States. And this is apparently how we're increasingly hydrating ourselves — with these big packs of petroleum-wrapped water," author Dan Imhoff said.

Imhoff believes far too many things come wrapped in plastic. His book "Paper of Plastic" takes aim at what he considers over-packaging.