disposable

Disposable

by Bob on March 8, 2008

We have a society of planned obsolescence. Not only that but also we are encouraging it by using something once and throwing it away despite its being made of something that can be saved by us and re-used or that can be recycled.

However, re-use might work, but I'm not sure recycling really works efficiently.

So I am looking at a can of soda which I have finished drinking and everyone else is throwing their now empty aluminum can out in the dust bin whilst I am looking at my empty aluminum soda can.

I wonder. What did it take to make this can ? It's sturdy and useful and not easily bent. In fact, it's really a hidden durable.

I wonder further. Could I make this can if left to my own devices ? And the answer is no, I couldn't. It might be stamped out in a huge soul-less factory but yet it's in its own way an object of beauty and ingenuity of design. So I can't duplicate it. But I am about to throw it out like everyone else. That's an odd paradox.

Metal is wrenched from the earth usually, if not made in a chemical process from yet other earth-stolen metals. We're not putting metal back into the earth and we're not having another Ice Age and glaciers yet so how accustomed are we to just ignoring how useful the seemingly banal things of life and throwing them out after a single use.

The same is true for plastic items. A scientist with whom I was having brunch one Sunday in my neighborhood in the late 1970s in New York City, well he looked at a plastic soda bottle and said that we were in trouble. I asked why, since it's just a plastic disposable bottle. He said that if we saved that plastic bottle that someday it would be a commodity worth money, perhaps more than gold. I asked why. He simply answered "OIL". And yes, I realised that the major component of plastic is oil or petroleum. And plastic can converted back into oil. And our world is in a clash of oil merchants over the owning and production of oil for cars and other things, including plastics.

So, there are so many things we just throw away without thinking after one use that we should take inventory and realise that they didn't come from nowhere. It came from the belly of the earth and Gaia. It's symbolically de-robing Gaia, perhaps.

I saw a man in NYC decades ago who collected used metal soup cans and made them into brilliant pieces of art.

Some people re-use plastic commercial one-use water bottles and that's got to be a good thing.

But the rub is that the production lines keep generating new bottles and cans despite even our oblique interest in saving the old one. Some much so, that we are forced to throw out the can or bottle because we in fact can't re-use it since we can't refill it with soup from the market. We are forced to buy new cans of soup and the like. And throw out the old one or have a house filled with empty used cans.

And the fancily designed plastic straws and big cups that we get at fast food places are amazing pieces of industrial design. But they're thrown out mostly right there in the fast food place after one use or no use. I prefer saving some since they are well-designed.

We are becoming self-consumptives of our own world. Even if the world might be an illusion, we are still using it up rapidly.

Like in the 1967 movie, "The Graduate" where the man simply says "plastics" as a rejoinder to Benjamin's possible future possibilities. And he was so right.

The Jefferson Airplane even sang about it in a song called "Plastic Fantastic Lover" from their 1967 debut album "Surrealistic Pillow". And Marty Balin has said he was writing about either television and its effect on society or his new stereo system. I think it was about television which is true to this day. People live with their television now to the exclusion of others. Marty knew about it a long time ago.

So the upshot of this all is we should maybe or maybe not hug a tree as the indians do before they cut it down, but we should at least realise that we are on a intimidatingly numbing roller coaster ride of conspiuous consumption and disposable one-use items and that we might want to re-consider it as a valid position or not.

Of course, this begs the parallel deeper question: will humans become disposable ? It's a bit worrisome with the kind of robots that are made now. Or androids or actroids, as a matter of fact. And the brilliant musician, Gary Numan, asked just that in his 1979 song "Are 'Friends' Electric?" on his album entitled "Replicas". He surely knew something about this all.

I have a general wish: that we don't dispose of anything that we can't make from scratch. We should re-use it or mend it if it's broken. I guess that makes me really old school. And I know it's an unattainable pipedream. But I still have hope. For a little while longer.