Wisdom Supply Co’s Founder, Heather Itzla, on the Realities of our Plastic Problem

Scissors with handles made from some percentage of recycled plastic -

Collecting spent plastic markers or glue sticks for big name recycling programs -

Pens made from recycled plastic water bottles -

At least it’s something, right?

It’s better than nothing, right?

Shrug.

Is it helping to throw cups of water at a raging wildfire?

Is it "better than nothing”?

Is it helping to bail out a bathtub with a thimble while the faucet runs full blast?

Or do all of these collecting and sorting efforts simply make us feel better about ourselves while doing nothing to change our purchasing habits?

Or worse, is it a marketing ploy facilitated by the very people creating the plastic garbage in the first place, in order to get us to buy more of their products?

No matter how hyper-sorty any fraction of the population is with their own plastic collection and recycling efforts, manufacturers are producing unfathomably more than any population on earth can ever hope to recycle or repurpose.

But what about that guy “cleaning up the ocean”?

If that guy’s invention is as successful as the inventor's highest hopes (and we hope that it is),in a year the project will collect less than the amount of plastic entering the world’s oceans every hour.

How about the other guy that invented the chemical process to remove micro plastics from water?

I read a headline that this teenager might have the solution for “A Plastic Free Ocean"

The ocean.

71% of the surface of the planet.

While we wish every genius and inventor out there all the luck in the world, plastic is in:

Our drinking water (tap and bottled);

Ocean water;

Lakes;

Streams;

Rivers;

Wetlands;

The air we breathe;

And the food we eat and feed our children.

We’re way beyond hoping for miracle inventions, and this is way bigger than asking for no straw or bringing our own bags and water bottles.]

The plastic crisis is real, and the message to manufacturers is that we need plastic-free, and we need it yesterday.

Quoting Greta Thunberg speaking about climate change:

“I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful.

I want you to panic…and act as if the house was on fire.”

#ThisShouldBeTaughtInSchools

#DitchDisposables