Wasted oil? Look at plastic bottles

Opinion

July 15, 2010

By the Rev. JIM PEAK First United Methodist Church McLeansboro Times-Leader Thu Jul 15, 2010, 12:00 AM CDT

As I’ve remarked so many times, McLeansboro is a town possessing some beautiful homes and buildings; our McCoy Library and the old Peoples National Bank building would be the envy of any community.

But I do see one thing around our town that I don’t like — all the trash that is so thoughtlessly tossed out vehicle windows by passers-by or dropped by pedestrians. And the most distressing of all is the plastic that litters our streets and empty lots.

We live in a plastic society, and plastic has made our lives better in so many ways. Even this computer at which I’m typing this morning is largely composed of plastic.

But did you know that plastic water bottle you dropped so carelessly as you walked or drove around will take anywhere from 100 to 1,000 years to decompose in a landfill (or on our streets)?

Yet we toss them away at the rate of 2.5 million bottles every hour! If that doesn’t boggle your mind, your mind is beyond boggling.

Production of plastic in the United States alone requires 200,000 barrels of oil a day. We complain about the waste of oil from BP’s enormous oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, yet we toss away without a thought thousands of barrels of oil every day in the form of nearly indestructible plastic bottles — not to mention plastic shopping bags, plastic rings from soda packs, plastic cups, plastic wrappers and on and on and on.

One hundred thousand mammals die every year from trying to eat plastic bags. Thousands of birds die from getting entangled in plastic line.

So think about it the next time someone asks you “Paper or plastic?” Two good reponses to that question are planning ahead to reuse or recycle plastic products and taking your own reusable bags whenever you go shopping.

As in so many other areas of life, if we do not choose to be part of the solution, we are going to be part of the problem.

God has given us a beautiful world. Let’s pass it on in the best possible shape we can to our children and grandchildren.

• The Rev. Jim Peak is the pastor of First United Methodist Church of McLeansboro.

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