We got through the election. Half the country wants to go towards a sustainable and inclusive future, and half the country wants to go back to 1950 and have business as usual. The future will win because you just can’t relive the past (except at renaissance festivals).  But we must go through the drama of change. It takes time to change millions, if not billions, of people. The race is on to see if we can change fast enough to save ourselves. The planet is in dire shape but still hobbling along. Can we stop using oil before the damage is unreversible? Too late. It already is unreversible, but we still need to try to stop this train to nowhere. Like a junky, laying in the street hooked on meth, we have already gone overboard. But we are still alive and as long as we are still alive, we have a chance to change.

Part of pulling ourselves out of the gutter is to be straight with the facts. Greenpeace just issued a statement that recycling plastic is not working. It is a myth that we can use plastic again and again, and it is okay. Plastic is problematic to recycle. It is difficult to sort and creates just as much pollution melting it down as it does making it. Most of the recycled plastic we ship to China and third-world countries for recycling, just ends up burning it or dumping it – on land or in the ocean.

Almost all of our food comes in plastic. How did humanity distribute food before plastic? It is almost unimaginable how we operated before plastic. Our packaging, our cars, our shoes, our cloths, our houses, our waterlines, our medical, our fricken’ dental work all relies on plastic. How can we not use this medium that can be formed into any shape, texture, or color. It was deemed a miracle when it was discovered (better living through chemicals, baby).  How can we unhook ourselves from this meth-like addiction?

Greenpeace is advocating a refill -reuse policy. That’s cool. Only us hippies will do that. Most people are so hooked on instant gratification that anything that requires forethought and planning is out. And there is no fancy labels and fun packaging. It is a little bleak after our rush of fun insta-pops and mini-bags.

Our need to have a substance to form into shapes is strong. It is a human desire. What are we going to do- carve wood cars? The most recycled materials are – lead, aluminum, and steel. We can do metals. Metals are valuable and can be reshaped over and over again.

The future I see is bio-packaging. We will grow our packaging. Mushroom manufacturing is the technology of the future. And when you throw it away it helps decomposition in the dumps. This is one of our solutions. We are on the edge bio-science called Biomimics- when science mimics nature.  

 Burning fuels is a rudimentary stage of technological development. It is a stepping stone into a more complicated but efficient world of electricity. We are transitioning. For those who look for ways to change to make the world better, cleaner, more human, and companionate, it is frustrating to be held back by what appears to be idiots who want to cling to established norms. Norms are making people complaisant and the planet miserable especially when there are solutions available. It is implementing them on a large scale that is difficult. Getting the stodgy industrialist with their money invested in toxic norms to switch gears is holding back the mothership. If money is the meth we need to ween ourselves off by switching drugs - maybe to Percocet and then to natural opium, then to enlightening mushrooms – anything to get ourselves out of the pollution gutter and off of our plastic fix. We got the midwestern suburbanites smokin’ weed. So there’s hope.