SAN FRANCISCO

I know it is applying logic to a world that is now completely driven my emotion, propaganda, and bullshit, but what REALLY is the source of all the plastic pollution in the oceans? If I happen to use a plastic straw and throw it away in a trashcan in the Atlanta Metropolitan area, I have a good reason to believe that it is disposed of by either a private or government trash hauler at some nearby landfill that is monitored by both the feds and the state government. That “should” be the case for nearly everyone in America….including in San Francisco. ARE these folks properly disposing of this trash? If not, there is the root cause AND the heart of a REAL solution.

But consider that nearly every ship in the US Navy, and the navies of every country on earth, dump their waste at sea. The same applies to nearly every cruise ship, nearly every merchant sea vessel, pleasure craft, etc. What is anyone doing about that?? We might not be able to do anything about other countries, but we could certainly do something about our own navy, and any ship flying the US flag. How about making waste disposal not only convenient, but a MANDATORY requirement for docking at US docks? Pollution is a trespass, even if the oceans are part of the “public realm.”

Then let’s look at recycling. Nearly every local government entity has gotten on the recycling bandwagon. To that end, and to make it “convenient” for their citizens, they have adopted so-called “single stream” recycling programs. These allow lazy citizens to simply throw all of their recycleables into a single container for pickup. The material is then sorted elsewhere. Unfortunately this means that all that stuff gets all over all that stuff, glass fragments get everywhere, and much of this material is useless for down-stream recycling. China has been the primary consumer of all this “contaminated” material, and much of the plastics that do not have a market in the US. How does that stuff get to China? By boat of course. Assuming it is shipped in cargo containers, estimates are that around 700 containers are lost at sea every year (no real data is kept and estimates have ranged MUCH higher). Assuming some of that lost is plastic trash, there is yet another source, all because local governments won’t own up to the lack of recycled material demand in the US and the need to make things “convenient” for people who don’t really care about recycling, but just want to think they are “doing something” to “save the planet.” (Full disclosure, my wife and I reject the local “free” recycling program and take ours to a facility where we must separate and where all the information is available about the final destinations of all the material – and we are happy to do it).

So if the powers that be are unwilling to find out why plastic straws end up filling the oceans, are unwilling to confirm that local waste disposal mechanisms are doing what they are supposed to do, are unwilling to control mass dumping by our own navy and merchant vessels, and are unwilling to simply keep our plastic waste on land, what exactly is the point of banning plastic straws in San Francisco?

Yeah, I know….shut up and go back to enjoying the wonder bread and circuses the ruling elite have provided as a distraction.