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Gun Violence and Plastic Pollution

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March For Our Lives, the protest for common sense gun control, took place 5 weeks after the mass shooting that happened in Parkland, Florida, was one of the largest protests in American History, turning out 1.2 million people in 880 different cities across the United States. People were incensed, moved, and demanded change. I see this same anger as, yet again, we have two mass shootings back-to-back, in Dayton and El Paso. It seems like mass shootings have become a bi-monthly event in the United States.

More Plastic Than Fish

In sixth grade my Social Studies teacher told us to look around the classroom. He then said 50% of your classmates are predicted to contract AIDS. I was mortified. I thought to myself “I am never going to have sex”. My teacher was not totally fear mongering as these were close to the actual projections at the time. If you followed the AIDS epidemic, you can see where they came to this conclusion. In 1920 it was first recorded only in the African nation of Congo, but by 1970 every single continent had cases of AIDS and kept growing by large numbers. Luckily the worst predictions regarding the AIDS epidemic in the United States never manifested. In 1995 40,000 deaths were AIDS/HIV related, but that dropped sharply to 10,000 AIDS/HIV by 2013. The same study found that even the African continent was starting to see a decline. The new prediction is that AIDS/HIV will see an even larger decline.

Betsy DeVos is Causing Plastic Pollution

When you are “woke” to the issues of plastic pollution, all the sudden it becomes painful to see the world use a material so harmful to the environment and human health so causally. For those of us who are in the “woke” category, we have to employ a lot of patience towards those who have not woken up to this issue just yet. From my estimation we the “woke” are less then 3% of the of the population. While it is hard to really know who the “woke” are from those who are not I looked up a few different things to see if I could determine how many are “woke”.

Disney Killed All the Mermaids

I think Disney murdered all the mermaids. We just returned from a three-day Disneyland vacation located in sunny California. It was crazy the amount plastic I saw there, such as balloons, souvenirs, and food packaging. I think it was enough to kill Ariel and all of her sea creature friends! It was also very difficult to refill our reusable water bottles. Water fountains were hard to find and the restaurants and refreshment stands refused to refill them. This made me appreciate Dutch Wonderland, a small theme park in Lansing, Pennsylvania, where it was always easy to refill your water bottle.

Do Not Recycle

GreenThinker DC’s mission is to de-normalize the overuse of plastic. When I tell people that I am starting an organization that will help fight plastic pollution, about 90% think I give talks on how to recycle. We at GreenThinker DC think plastic recycling is a failure. If it was a good idea every city, town, and municipality would be doing it. As of right now only mid-size and big cities that can take on the loss of recycling can afford to have recycling centers. That’s right – recycling operates on a loss.

The New Normal is Abnormal

Customs and societal norms are handed down to us from previous generations, but they can also change over time. We continue to challenge racism, sexism, and other ‘isms’ in the US, leading to positive changes in what is normal and legal in our society. However if left unexamined or unquestioned we can pass down harmful customs and traditions. We accept single-use plastic as the norm. Why?