A reckoning for the inventor of styrofoam

(720 words)

Carl Georg Munters, the father of styrofoam, died on this day in 1989. News reports made no mention if his coffin was packed with form-fitting styrofoam to insulate his body on its journey to Hell.

The late Swede’s non-recyclable invention is the source of much environmental angst.

So is plastic, of course. But plastic — at least for now — gives responsible consumers the option to recycle. So all should be hunky-dory, right?

Apparently not.

That must mean responsible consumers are becoming like all the endangered species being killed off by all the irresponsible ones. There aren’t enough of us left to make much of a difference.

It puts me, a determined optimist, in an awkward position.

The pessimist says the oceans are choked with plastic. I say soon we’ll all be able to drive to Europe! Truly, Jesus walked on water and became the Savior. What will it mean when we’re all able to walk on water?

The pessimist says we’re on trajectory to cover the entire planet in styrofoam up to 20-feet deep. I say when that happens plane crash fatalities will drop to zero!

Did you know styrofoam is 98 percent air? That’s fascinating.

So if you’re ever in the middle of the ocean and find yourself beginning to drown, just reach out for a nearby chunk of styrofoam and begin to eat it. 

Of course, I’m being facetious. Thanks to so much plastic it’ll soon be impossible to drown in the ocean. 

I was prepared to have my intellect tickled when I Googled “styrofoam facts” and up on top popped “Styrofoam fun facts.” 

I expected to read little bullet-point delights like: “Did you know if you soak discarded styrofoam chunks in water long enough they’ll turn into tiny dolphins?”

That to me would be a fun fact.

Here are Google's idea of actual “fun facts.”

• Styrofoam is made from styrene and styrene is made from petroleum products, which are non-renewable and pollute the environment.
• Styrene is a cancer-causing health hazard.
• Chemicals from Styrofoam plates and cups can leach into food, especially if you microwave the Styrofoam.

If those are fun facts then the Old Testament descriptions of things like plague, pestilence and human sacrifice are the “feel good” parts of the Bible.

And remember: styrofoam is 98 percent air.

Imagine how horrific it’ll be if styrofoam is ever made out of … styrofoam!

The abundance of styrofoam is one of the reasons I’m convinced if Planet Earth were our first apartment we could kiss that security deposit goodbye — and anymore when it comes to kissing anything involving the planet I’d recommend one of those aristocratic air kisses that don’t come within a foot of the face. 

Set aside that styrofoam can kill us — kill us! — the really big problem is its ubiquity. It’s everywhere and it takes 500 years to decompose. 

That means the styrofoam cup you threw away after this morning’s coffee will remain in the environment through the year 2519 or about when Larry King concludes it may be time to start thinking about retirement.

One source estimates we make and waste 12 million tons of styrofoam each year.

Can you imagine the size of 12 million tons of something that weighs so little? It would be like the size of a Saturn. 

Not Saturn the vehicle.

I’m talking Saturn the planet.  

Maybe I was unduly harsh on Carl Munters. He was after all a brilliant man with more than 1,000 patents to his name. He’s best known for a refrigerator design that so revolutionized cooling efficiency that Albert Einstein declared it “astonishing.”

Try and fathom doing anything that would make Einstein say, “Wow! Never thought of that.”

We need a new Munters — not to be confused with  a new “Munsters” (I adore Herman Munster) — who’ll fix all that’s been wrought by styrofoam.

Maybe we could tweak the composition so styrofoam is even lighter, lighter than even air. That way you could drink your coffee, let go of the cup and it could slowly rise into outer space.

Remember: Be sure to let go of the cup!

Or in tribute to the inventor, we could fill every coffin with styrofoam packing peanuts. That would rid the surface planet of styrofoam while simultaneously acting as a stabilizing agent in the event of earthquakes.

But, clearly, we must do something.

Because I don’t really think Munters is going to Hell.

My fear is Hell is coming to us.

Related … 

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Frustrated recycler seeking trashy solutions

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Vacation recycling near impossible

Taking my worms to elementary school

Frustrated recycler seeking trashy solutions

(691 words)

I’m convinced the only way we’re going to solve our confounding plastic waste crisis is to make all the containers we use to transport some kind of food out of some other kind of food.

It’s why I always order soup in a bread bowl. You slurp the soup then you consume the bowl. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is thrown away. The only thing that could be better is if the server presented it on a pancake plate. It’s an environmentalist’ dream, I tell ya. 

A minimum-wage career dishwasher’s nightmare, yes, but an environmentalist’s dream. 

I’m imaging a world where soft drinks come in bottles made out of, say, bird seed. 

That way you could enjoy your soda and let it either drop to the ground or chuck it at the head of any nearby New England Patriots fan. Either way, birds will swoop in and devour the debris or an NFL referee will appear out of nowhere and flag you for mistreating Tom Brady.

Make the penalty flag out of Pringles!

I mention all this because I’ve about reached the breaking point with recycling. As has my Latrobe recycling center, China and, I guess, planet Earth.

My wife and I have been avid recyclers for 25 years. We were on the ground floor of the movement.

The problem with being on the ground floor of a movement like that is that eventually the ground floor becomes full of trash.

That’s about where we’re at now. China says it no longer has a market for trash, so eventually my community recycling facility said it can no longer accept ours. I began to sense we were nearing a breaking point when it dawned on me just how much time I was spending essentially recycling air.

This wasn’t good, old air mind you. It was the crappy stuff you and I breath.

I differentiate because I remember a story in the Weekly World News — vigilant tracker of Bat Boy! — that quoted reputable scientists from South Granada Community College in the Caribbean who said we could cleanse Earth’s air by popping the tires of old cars from the 1950s to liberate the good clean air from bygone days when all was more wholesome.

Mind you, this was the same scholarly tabloid that revealed all the ocean waters are composed entirely out of old dinosaur urine.

I digress.

But I’ve lately noticed how loading my vehicle up was like Santa loading up his sleigh only I had gifts like stuff nobody really wants. Not even China. I had maybe 4-pounds of actual recyclables in big leaf disposal bag as big as Santa’s sack. I’d pour the contents into the big blue steel container, an enormous unit that must weigh nearly 20 times its flimsy cargo.

I’m one of those guys who is hyper alert to any hint of managerial inefficiency — the sole, glaring blindspot being the way I’ve pursued my entire career. 

First, every home recycler should have a spiffy kitchen trash compactor that could reduce a week’s worth of recyclables into the size of my old Speed Racer lunch box. 

Then you take your little square to the recycling center where they weigh it, you pay a small fee and they in return give you the key element to ensure the program’s success. 

They give you a great, big balloon. 

Tie it to you trash and … release! Trash disposal will never appear so scenic.

The balloons will need to go high enough that if they collide with our orbital space trash or some luckless bastards on the International Space Station the whole mess will burn up on re-entry, providing a cool light show for us gravity-bound Earthlings. 

That’ll tide us over until space travel gets so cheap we can slingshot disposable rockets full of trash straight into the sun, that great galactic incinerator.

I’d go into more detail on this and the obvious role black holes can play in trash disposal next week, but I’d be lying. That seems like a lot of work. I’ll instead just re-run this post.

What would you expect from such a committed recycler?

Related …

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My one-man neighborhood trash crusade

(664 words)

Carrying a plastic grocery bag with me on my daily walks is starting to become a habit.

It’s happening frequently enough that my daughters said they’re thinking about getting me an orange jump suit so it’ll at least look like I belong to a prison work release program.

They think this would be better than appearing as I am, just a conscientious father out to tidy up the planet they’ll one day be inheriting from me.

You’d think they’d be grateful. If things keep going the way they’ve always been, the planet’s the only thing they’ll likely be inheriting from me.

For some reason, even the daughters of two recycle-mad, earth-friendly tree huggers like Val and myself sense there is a stigma to a grown man wandering around his neighborhood scooping up trash.

The haul from yesterday’s 30-minute, nearly two-mile walk are above. It’s about 3 pounds or so. I was able to recycle about half of it which bestows the task with some moral merit.

There are no rules as to what I will or will not pick up, but I try and adhere to the idea that I won’t weave out into traffic to snag a stray napkin. I try and pick up what I or someone else might trip over.

And I keep moving.

There’s a couple houses at the bottom of hills where the trash accumulates, but I’m not going to just stand there and pick it all up. That’s the homeowner’s job, as unwelcome as it might be.

Plus, if an elderly resident saw me standing there and raking up the rubbish, she might ask if I wouldn’t mind mowing her lawn and then, having once for about two months been a Cub Scout, I’d feel obliged. 

Even without a bag, I almost always pick up and tote almost anything recyclable.

This is at odds with what Lucy, our 7 year old, would do. She thinks I’m an idiot for picking up something that isn’t even ours.

I tell her the trash isn’t ours, but the planet is.

I say this with the same kind of Biblical conviction Moses conveyed when he was exhorting the Pharaoh to let his people go.

She’d never dream of picking up a can or a bottle on the grounds that “someone’s lips have been on it.” This from a girl who cheerfully lets the dog lick her face moments after he’s used the same tongue to do the same thing to his own butt.

To me, the stigma should be on those who step over relatively “clean” trash. C’mon, just pick it up and carry it to nearby trash can. You’re setting a good example.

It goes without saying, of course, that there should be open season on anyone caught littering.

But there are laws against vigilante homicide, which is a pity.

There are laws against littering, too, but those simply aren’t enforced.

And while I believe there is a stigma against picking up trash, I have evidence that the attitude is changing.

A passing landscaper saw me last week pick up a littered liter bottle of pop and carry it along. He pulled over and told me to toss it in the bed of his truck. He’d recycle it for me.

I told him thanks, man, for being such a swell guy.

“Hey, there’s more of us out here than you think,” he said. “We can make a difference.”

That’s the kind of encouragement that could lead to some kind of enviro-OC/DC. 

It’s easy to get nuts about this sort of thing, and once you start picking up a little trash, you soon realize it’s not much more difficult to pick up a whole lot of trash. And pretty soon your good intentions are driving you and everyone else insane.

Yes, neighborhood clean-ups are slippery slopes once you start down them.

At least after a few trips the slippery slopes will be mostly litter free.

Related . . .

I pranked the trash man today

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Vacation recycling near impossible

Watching my waste-averse wife try to find a stranger willing to take two leftover cuts of pizza reminded me of Oskar Schindler's heroics.

When it comes to saving the planet, she’s that earnest.

“Please,” she said, “they’re really delicious and it would be such a terrible shame to have to just throw them away.”

That in essence is what saintly Schindler said about the Jews he saved, although I don’t think he ever hinted about their tastiness.

The road to eco-purity is littered with good intentions, not to mention discarded burger wrappers, water bottles and mini-mountains of menthol filtered cigarette butts.

This is never more evident than when you’re on summer vacation and witness to the massive amounts of waste that come along with enjoying being a consumer on a jaunt in a world that looks like it quit caring.

I’m one of those maniacs that will chase a wind-blown Hershey’s wrapper around a shopping center parking lot like it was a $50 bill.

I just decided years ago that I was going to without complaint pick up and dispose of as much trash as I could without veering too far out of my way, digging in jagger bushes or risking getting hit by a speeding bus.

On my daily walks, I often carry a plastic bag. Usually, I can find enough trash in my stumbling path to fill the bag.

I realize the utter absurdity of stooping in the gutter to prevent someone’s discarded cigarette wrapper from traveling downstream while BP floods the Gulf with millions of barrels of crude, yet stoop I do.

If I was a superhero, I’d be StooperMan!

It would be different if I the only trash disposal places were way up atop the remote Himalayas.

But the world is littered with trash cans. They’re everywhere and there’s usually an unholy halo of garbage ringing every one of them. So I pick it up and put it where it belongs.

When my daughter asked why I was picking up trash that wasn’t mine, I knelt down and said, “No, it isn’t my trash, but it is my planet.”

Now that’s a dandy line, one the Sierra Club’s free to pilfer.

It’s the kind of line my daughter will likely repeat to countless therapists she’ll see over the course of her life to correct exposure to my uniformly liberal aphorisms.

But the landscape is different on vacation. First, the six-cylinder Saturn -- and it’s green, by the way (in color at least) -- is finite. It doesn’t expand to make room for all the empty sodas we consume and would dearly love to recycle.

I draw the line at hauling trash around the country so we’re at the mercy of the hosting hotel. If they don’t put out a recycle bin, we toss it in the trash, a raised middle finger to Ma Nature and all we espouse.

Table scraps is where I part ways with my wife.

Truly, the world needs a machine that will allow all of us to fax leftovers to the starving.

The waste at any restaurant is staggering. Super sized portions leave conscientious diners with the option of overeating or watching the indifferent waitress drop a veritable feast into the garbage.

A food fax would solve all that. Restaurants would be able to take leftovers and send them to needy people around the globe.

I’m surprised Val hasn’t devoted herself to inventing one.

Maybe she’s too busy beseeching strangers to take what we can’t eat.

That’s what happened at an Indiana restaurant where a coupon stipulated we’d get the grande size. It was way too much for the four of us and two enormous cuts were left on the table. Val began to panic over the potential waste.

“Forget it,” I said. “You’ll look like a crazy woman for even asking and only an idiot would take food from a perfect stranger.”

Thus, my little speech made it all the more satisfying to her when some nice Kentucky woman said why, yes, thank you, my family will be happy to eat them.

She returned to the table triumphant that she’d won a small battle on behalf of Mother Earth. The food would nourish another and not go to waste.

I told her she was right, I was wrong and that I’m an idiot.

It was nothing she hadn’t heard before.

The apology was one of the few things I’d managed to recycle the entire week.