We have all probably heard about the challenges and problems with plastics breaking down from trash in the ocean. Soda and water bottle containers, plastic bags, and other plastic trash and debris that washes out to see, or worse is dumped there. Terrible stuff, and the environmentalists are right about this one, it’s totally unacceptable, and yet, that what humans are doing around the planet. The Atlantic and Pacific Gyre “trash islands” as they are called swirl around and around polluting our sea.
An interesting article to read is “Plastic People of the Universe; Everything You Wanted to Know About the Biology of Plastic (but were afraid to ask),” by Jill Neiwark in Discover Magazine. You can look it up online if you wish to find a copy. The problem is that plastic breaks down and those molecules and polymer chains affect life. In the ocean it can change the sex of fish, in humans it can cause havoc for future generations.
Now then, let’s talk about plastic usage in agriculture, thin plastics which are used one time, break down quickly, and are discarded. Have you ever seen the giant plastic sheets used on Strawberry fields to hold in the moisture and give the seeds the green house effect, also keeping birds from the seeds giving them a chance to grow? Did you know that in some regions of our nation, such as the Oxnard Plain (in California) that they grow strawberries 3 seasons per year?
My gosh that is a lot of plastic, and all that ends up in the landfills. Is there an easier way? Perhaps, not, as it’s a pretty easy process, shrink wrapping a field of strawberries with a giant machine towed behind a tractor. Then coming back and unwrapping it when completed, often discarding the plastic, sending it to the dump. Is this an environmentally wise way to grow strawberry crops? After all, there is enough plastic in the world as we discussed above already, and it’s really causing problems
