The Era of Plastic

As a civilization humanity has grown and progressed, from the Age of Discovery to the Age of Enlightenment humanity has striven for more. From the Industrial revolution to the Space Age humans have pushed the boundaries of mechanics and outer-space its self. Today developed countries live in an Era of Plastic.  From the widespread use of nonrenewable resources to the inability to understand the concept of money, plastic is the life blood and currency of modern society.

Plastic is made from nonrenewable resources such as coal, gas and crude oil. The most commonly used and discarded plastic items are grocery sacks and water/soda bottles. It is estimated that 1 trillion plastic bags are used and discarded every year, 1,000,000,000,000 plastic bags. That's almost 2 million bags being used and discarded every minute.  Bottles are an issue as well. Americans on average per person drank 1.6 gallons of bottled water a year in 1976. In 2011, some thirty years later they now drink 30 gallons per person. This is dangerous not only because it requires millions of barrels of crude oil to make the bottles it also causes thousands of tons of carbon dioxide to be released in the transportation of the bottled beverages from manufacturers to stores. If that wasn't bad enough some studies have shown hormone-disrupting phthalates leached from the plastic of the bottle into the water in bottles that had been stored for 10 weeks, only 2 and a half months. That isn't even mentioning the fact that bottled water can cost anywhere from 240 to 10,000 times more than tap water. Which brings me to plastic money.

The average person in the United States of America over the age of sixteen has a credit or debit card and most over the age of eighteen have both. To apply for a loan most institutions require at least two sources of credit ie more than one credit card. Very few individuals carry large amounts of cash with them so most large purchases and almost all medium to small purchases are done with a credit or debit card. When one goes to the market they don't bring a bag of salt, a satchel of gold or a wallet of cash, they merely whip out a nice shiny card, 2 inches by 3 inches, and swipe away. It's what someone uses to buy something "priceless." Plastic cards with magnetic strips are modern society's form of currency, no longer does one need to actually possess money to purchase something, no longer does one need to understand the value of a dollar when minimum wage is $9 an hour and the cost of living is so high. It costs $14.25 to see a two hour movie in the theaters, that requires almost two hours of working to see that movie. People don't directly correlate the number of hours they have to work in order to pay for what their buying, they merely swipe it away.

It is an Era of Plastic modern humanity is living in were plastic is everywhere from ones wallet to their daily lives. No other resource is so prevalent in everyone's lives as plastic.

Sources include:

Cleanup.org

Greenliving.natonalgeographic.com

Natural Resources Defense council