Plastic – Miracle or Monster

Most packaging used today is not biodegradable and has a never-ending future, which may be ruining our children’s futures.

Plastic is both miracle and monster. The miracles are helmets that save lives; packaging peanuts that protect valuables in transit; utensils, trays and clear wrap for the portability and protection of food; bags for handling groceries and garbage; and indestructible toys and auto dashboards to name a few uses.

The monster is revealed, however, when birds and fish eat plastic forks and spoons, food trays, bags, and take out food packaging like lids and straws. Their stomachs fill with non-nutrient junk and they die. This is not a miracle. This is a preventable disaster. As the per capita demand for fish consumption increases, plastic is taking its toll. In the future, the need for, and loss of, seafood will create another undesired outcome.

Many of our beaches glisten with polymer pearls called ‘nurdles.” From nurdles, all forms of plastic are created, from polyvinyl siding, to food packaging, the elastic polystyrene in truck and car tires and they even find their way into our cosmetics. Nurdles are injected with chemicals to affect the attributes of the final products, making them hard, soft, flexible, brightly colored, shatterproof, etc. The monstrous side of plastic is that once created, it never, ever, degrades and then, buried in landfills or carried by the winds, it pollutes our land and water.

Most of the flotsam at sea comes from the same plastic products that make our lives so convenient. There are several areas at sea, one as large as the state of Texas, where currents create doldrums and the plastic garbage collects there. See the The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

There is hope, however. Beyond the miraculous and monstrous sides of plastic is our American ingenuity. There are biodegradable replacements for many commonly used plastic products. Some are shown at the Natur-Tec site. There are dissolvable shipping peanuts that replace Styrofoam peanuts, biodegradable eating utensils and many other choices available. Americans discovered plastic and now we are developing the cure for its design flaw.

We can have safe, convenience products that will not destroy our planet. We can protect our children without poisoning their environment before they have children of their own. We can make this change happen. We simply have to convince our government and business leaders that we want environmentally safe, biodegradable packaging used exclusively. If we continue to send this message we will enjoy the convenience and flexibility, we have all come to expect, from products that do not have such a monstrous second face.

Navigating the Produce Department with PLU Codes

First, let us be clear; the FDA DOES NOT protect consumers from genetically modified (GMO) food or require informative labels on packaged produce.  The labels we see on produce appear at the whim of grocers and are suggested by industry marketers, such as the Produce Marketing Association (PMA). Marketers advocate use of labels to massage some consumer-identified concerns, such as calories, fat content, sell-by dates, and place of origin and also to assist produce departments with electronic processing and pricing. Dismissed is any industry concern about genetic modification of the seed, from which the produce grows, or the chemical soup in which it is grown.  The lack of labels, to identify GMO produce and processed foods with GMO ingredients, is part of what is driving consumers to seek organics.

Although Produce Look Up (PLU) codes are established by the International Federation of Produce Standards (IFPS) for the industry, consumers can get information from them as well. The PLU codes, when present, appear on the small sticky label stuck to the skin of fruits or vegetables, and identifies how it was grown, what species it is and, of course, helps the industry with electronic processing and pricing.

Most commonly seen are four-digit PLU codes. They indicate produce grown using chemicals, many of which are toxic and some proven carcinogenic, but which the FDA approves. The Agra-industries and chemical-industries, an almost invisible line separating them, have successfully lobbied the FDA to allow many chemicals to be A-listed for use in growing food. Often, those seeking the licenses to sell the chemicals have supplied the only information reviewed by the FDA, before approval.

A five-digit PLU code, beginning with the number "9" identifies organically grown produce. However, it should be noted that the green and white "USDA certified organic" label is the only reliable symbol available to consumers today. The words "organic," "naturally grown, or "all natural" are not trustworthy indicators of a product's pedigree, rather they are terms that are sometimes used to lure consumers to products they might otherwise avoid.

The PLU system is already capable of identifying GMO produce with a five-digit code but it is so rarely used few know it exists.  The first digit of the GMO PLU code is "8". This tells the consumer that the produce was grown from a seed, in toxic conditions for which the plant was "genetically engineered" to survive. More information about  PLU codes is available at http://www.plucodes.com/ .

A PMA executive offered this information, at a meeting of association members, broadcast on YouTube,

"Labels do matter because consumers are bringing their ideals to the grocery store."  Therefore, consumer concerns appear to be important to the industry, and statistics indicate that most consumers would not knowingly purchase GMO foods. Yet, finding a sticker with the PLU code for GMO produce is akin to finding hen's teeth. This may be due to the fact that Monsanto, the patent holder of GMO seeds and primary producer of most of the chemicals used, is a PMA 'partner', as indicated on their website.

Consumers are, somewhat, complicit in their own fleecing, when it comes to buying food. According to the PMA, "the majority of consumers get their produce information from the package, produce section store signs, family and friends and the produce department staff."  Since labeling is at the whim of the store, as are their signs, and the same store sources and department staff educate family and friends; it is easy to see how the equation favors the industrial food industry over consumers. 

Consumers fail before they begin their hunting and gathering expeditions because the places they hunt are laden with information land mines.  GMO produce looks bigger and always picture perfect which can conceal old produce with diminished nutrient values.  It usually lacks taste and ingesting the genetic modification assets of the plant is unhealthy. 

The second choice, and most prevalent, is the produce grown in the FDA's approved chemical soups. These also have less nutrients and taste, and the chemicals that permeate their skins withstand washing. They also have abnormal shelf lives.

Organic grown produce is generally rich in nutrition and taste. It has a normal life span and, after weighing the health liabilities of other produce growing methods, are well worth any difference in price.

While the PLU codes can be helpful for both the industry and consumers, the FDA must seriously address their responsibility to safeguard the American consumer with policies that require informative and appropriate food labels. Consumers must be willing to become informed shoppers and invest their time and money in their own health.  

We Can, We Must, Do Better

It was late March of 2012.  The temperature was 80 degrees.  The sun was shining and the breeze was light. It may have been the average spring day if it were not for the fact that I was walking my dog in northern Illinois.  We should have been tramping through the vestiges of the winter's retreating snows in a brisk 40-degree wind. Since it had been over 80 degrees for more than a week, the grass was green and early-emerging flowers, meant to arrive for Easter, were in full bloom and threatened to expend all their celebratory glory and expire before Easter arrived.  An old man and a young boy were busy feeding fish at a pond's edge and ducks lazily paddled toward them for a share of the booty.

Watching the feeding frenzy, I thought of how naturally people recognize and accept the foreign universe of fish in their water world, or the symbiotic relationship of human and animal universes interconnecting, as with my dog and I. We walked together, two alien universes sharing an experience and communicating on some level of a relationship, just like the boy, the man and the fish were. 

Easily we encourage and welcome an alien presence to flutter at our bird feeders. We recognize and use our experiences with nature for our poems and songs, our recreation, our fantasy and enjoyment as well as to stimulate our human sense of wonder.  We acknowledge that we can learn from our observations of nature.  We can be revolted but mostly we are captivated by our sense of understanding and oneness with many other creatures' behaviors. Why then, is it so difficult for humans to recognize the responsibility of our relationship with nature, or as many like to term it these days "the environment"?

Blithely, we toss our trash, laden with chemicals, into landfills that percolate the poisons into the watery habitats of many creatures.  Carelessly, we farm using methods and chemicals that destroy ecosystems upon which multitudes of life forms depend, including our own. Animals that give their lives for our subsistence, we unnaturally imprison for convenience, causing them to suffer their short-lived lives under our inhuman and thoughtless care, rather than raising them in natural habitats.  We invite the birds to our feeders hung over lawns treated with petro-chemicals that kill them as well our weeds.

Nature's life forms, including humans, exist in environments that are part of and interact with many other environments, often depending on each other to survive. Too often, humans easily dismiss the balance in nature as unimportant, unconscious of how much their own existence is as dependent upon the interaction and balance as any other life form is.  Many religions emphasize the importance of nature to the extent of imposing the responsibility of oversight on the human species. How miserably we are failing. 

We talk about conservation as an answer to the dwindling species populations, like Polar Bears for example. Yet, are the last Polar Bears in a zoo the answer or just a conscience-wash for those who are semiconscious? Imprisoning specimens will not fulfill our oversight responsibility. We have to do better than that.