ROOM FOR A PONY

She wrote upon it: Return to sender. Address unknown. No such number. No such zone.

China’s mad.

Yes, China — the one who buys most of the world’s discarded plastics so that we can buy fright-loads of manufactured plastic doodads back from them — has had it.

Reason? They’ve been getting boat-loads of plastic with tons of garbage mixed in. They can’t handle the level of sorting that it would require to glean out the usable plastics. Plus they’d have so much garbage left over that they’d incur a garbage disposal problem of their own in accepting these shipments. So they’re NOT accepting them. They’re turning away boat-loads of plastic, and charging the sender for the cost of shipping it back.

So now nobody’s happy. Including us — meaning Lindi and I. What are we supposed to do with that big box of rigid plastics filling up in our garage? The one we normally take to the recycling center ourselves, since curbside pickup doesn’t take everything. We’re going to have to put it into the regular garbage, and it’s killing us.

It’s unclear exactly where these contaminated shipments to China are coming from. Europe? The U.S.? We don’t know. But this is a clear example of how a few rotten apples DO in fact spoil the whole bunch. Somebody’s screwing up, somewhere. A few individuals, whether it be people or countries, get sloppy and now the whole system doesn’t work as planned. See? It’s true: Every little action matters.

Every action that each person takes makes a difference, good or bad. So there.