Convenience?

Convenience?

Everywhere we look, trash that has to be disposed of is piling up. Americans litter the countryside with their plastic made materials, aluminum cans, and glass bottles. The trend of the 1990s to rely heavily on "disposables" has created a throwaway society.

A little boy, spending his free time lounging upon the lazy, hot afternoon of the summer day, sat in a transfixed state in front of what seems to be a thrilling piece of machinery. His eyes never cease from moving from that one spot, even when a figure approached him, probably his mother, giving him of what seemed to be a fresh batch of cookies upon a paper plate. The boy reached for a cookie as the mother leaves the room. The plate, joining the many other utensils lying around the floor; from cups to bottles of water and soda, will soon be neglected once again for their 'one time use.'

At home, disposables plates, cups, plastic ware, and, of course, diapers are filling the even 'plastic' bags that hold all these items for which to be transported to the local landfill at some other time.

Panning to the mother as she left her son, we find ourselves upon her baby daughter, in need of a quite diaper change, from what we can deduced from the smell that seems to linger in the room. The baby wails to have some kind of attention. The mother gently places the daughter upon an open stand and replaces the now useless diaper into a trash bag with a new one; the daughter stops her outcries. The mother calls out to her son, twice, seeing as the son seems too preoccupied with his activities, to take out the trash. A moment later, followed by a few loud stomps, the son comes in, displeased with his interruption, and dejectedly carried the plastic bag out into the bigger trash cans outside.

At hospitals, paper gowns, disposable thermometers, towels used in surgery, and miles of plastic tubing cannot be re-sterilized and reused - as a result, are being sent to special landfills for medical wastes. Whereas it takes...