[GreenYes] Ted v. teethers

["Paul Goettlich" <gottlich@infi.net>]

Finding a compromise between a Ted Kazcynsk lifestyle and selling the latest
in vinyl teething toys is not what I have in mind when I suggest that
plastics be totally eliminated. I lived a happy and healthy life before
plastics, and choose to do so now.

The government's view of recycling in their publication "Closing the Circle
News" is a fine example of shallowness, shortsightedness, and a willingness
to conspire with Industry. To proudly display tourists viewing Yellowstone's
Old Faithful from a deck made of recycled plastic is a thoroughly disgusting
and revolting concept that only Industry (and/or the profit/greed motive)
would create. The migration of the toxic chemicals that makeup this wood
into the environment has not been fully studied. But I have no doubt that it
is only a matter of time before that the tragic information will be
published.

If we are so familiar with all the destruction caused by plastics, why not
change our opinions? A Chinese proverb goes something like (please correct):
If you do not change the direction of your path, you will get to the
destination of that path. Put another way; logic would have it that if the
same response is elicited from an action continuously and without fail, that
one must change in order to achieve a different response.

History (even truthful Industry "science"--when it can be unearthed by
activists) has repeatedly illustrated that the *production* of plastic,
without using the semantics of degrees, ie; PVC v. HDPE, is a highly toxic
process. The production wastes, aka byproducts, are generally found at
Superfund Sites. The *use* of plastic is toxic. It has also well-known that
the *useful life* of plastic is extremely limited when compared with many
other products. Finally--but infinitely at the same time--plastic is never
reunited with its source, the Earth. It rests on it, in it, around it, but
never back to it, as the Master plan would have it.

Does it not trouble us that there are NO regulations that are sufficiently
protective? Does it not trouble us that only a handful of the 80,000
chemicals have been tested at all, let alone tested as per the existing
inadequate regulations? All, I repeat, all signs point to species
extinctions at an alarming rate comparable to and greater than previous mass
extinctions such as the last ice age. It is well beyond being a matter of
finances. That argument is nonproductive. We can change and we must.

Paul

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