Just One Word: Plastics

Day 55: Plastics (specifically a couple of broken Adirondack footstools)
Large topic, plastics. In 1967, plastics were the wave of the future. Before then, cheese came wrapped in waxed paper and toothbrushes were made from bone and bristles. Now there are 46,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer in the Earth's oceans, and the doldrums is a floating plastic continent.

If the chairs won't give up the ghost,
why must the footstools keep breaking?

But look on the bright side: our teeth are gleaming.

We've had these Adirondack chairs since the summer of 1998, when we moved to Ann Arbor from San Francisco. They cost $12 each and I guess we thought we'd have them one year, then get the real thing. That was back when I hadn't had a full night's sleep in over two years and couldn't think past the next diaper. Sixteen years later, the chairs have faded a little, but otherwise, they're pristine.

If these chairs had the decency to wear out,
I'd feel more comfortable replacing them

Not so the busted footstools. "Bulky plastics" can go right in the recycling bin. Unfortunately, it's not clear that recycling plastic is better for the environment than making new plastic from raw materials because of the high use of fossil fuels in the recycling process.

Better: if you have plastic bottles, packaging or furniture, keep using them.

Best: avoid using or buying plastic at all.

Good luck with that. Avoiding plastics is like running between raindrops.