RUTHFULLY YOURS

What’s needed is a proportionate, scientific approach — not mere posturing.I suppose this is what they call a “First World problem,” so humor me. It’s 8.30 a.m. I’ve just finished at the gym. I’m in line to get my breakfast smoothie. I wait, as patient people ought, till the voice crieth “Order for Muh-dy,” and I think, as a kind person should, Close enough. I smile as my change is handed to me. I pout. I sip . . . then:

*$&*%#%! This straw is made of paper. And now — owing to an entirely foreseeable combination of suction and saliva — it is disintegrating in my mouth. Whose idea was this?!

Please don’t pretend. I know you know what I’m talking about . . .

Recall the following science from the 1967 hit movie The Graduate:

Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?

Benjamin: Yes, I am.

Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?

Mr. McGuire: There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?

We’ve been thinking about it an awful lot since then. The mass production of plastic products began during the Second World War and has skyrocketed ever after. At this point, the industry is predicted to double in the next 20 years. While the benefits of plastics, from keeping food fresh to your toddler happy, are too obvious to note, its downsides — that there is currently more than 5 trillion plastic pieces weighing over 250,000 tons afloat at sea — deserve proper attention, too.

The trouble is that the West’s war on plastics has, of late been missing the mark. A couple of years ago, for instance, the vice president of the European Commission attacked “single-use plastics” — the kind that take “five seconds to produce, are used for five minutes, then take 500 years to break down again.” The problem he described has, in many ways, been replaced by similar problems.