WaterNotes

Qtips and Gum

I dont know what prompted it, but I started looking at all the trash that I generate in a single day.  Like the qtips you’re not supposed to poke into your ears.  Mine have the rolled paper sticks.. but I know a lot of them are made of plastic these days. 

I wonder how long it takes qtip plastic sticks to disintegrate.  I wonder how much waste that accounts for every year in the landfills and out in the ocean and in the pacific gyre?  (Aka the trash island.)

Wouldn’t that be such a simple thing to change?  Paper for plastic qtips.  Canvas shopping bags in place of Target bags that end up floating in the ocean, deceiving nearby gullible sea turtles when they advertise themselves as delicious, gelatinous jellyfish.  

Or gum wrappers.  I love gum.  I chew a lot of it.  But there’s all this unnecessary wrapping involved with my beloved Orbit Sweet Mint, from the cellophane pull tags edged with red lines to the individual wax paper casings around each piece. 

Is it really so necessary to have all this paper and waste? And the gum itself, how long does it really stay around in the environment once I spit it out?  Wasnt there some ice mummy dug up from thousands of years ago with a gum-like substance based on tree resin found still between his teeth?  I seem to remember something like that.

The way I see it, if gum can exist as a black mark on the sidewalk in an amusement park for fifty years, what does it do in a landfill? 

Heck, if I’m swallowing gum what does it do inside my own body?  If I drop dead tomorrow will an autopsy reveal a giant ball of gum stuck in my belly? 

I know, its probably silly even to think that’s possible.  Rather like germinating watermelon seeds inside your stomach if you swallowed them as a kid.  Aren’t relatives full of useless frights and teases?

And what else around here could I eliminate from my hopefully unwasteful life as a naturalist and a teacher?  I figure its about that time - for me to walk the path I keep professing to know so much about.

Self Portrait As Revealed by Trash