Hello! So glad you stopped by. I have been a bit bored these days. Not much happens in my current home. I live among smelly, decomposing odds and bits in a hole below the Earth’s surface. My home’s name is landfill. Today is a good day. Not much has happened. My neighbors have left me alone. Rainy days are a whole different story. My home becomes a pool of slurry, water mixed with various decomposing neighbors. This toxic slurry starts taking bits of my body away. Ouch. It’s painful. It wasn’t always like this. You may not believe it if you looked at me today, but I had a glamorous past life. Let me share my story.

My mom’s name was oil, and my dad was gas. They met, and bonded. I am hoping there was a love story, but I am not sure. Their bond was chemical. I guess they had chemistry!! They formed monomers, which bonded further to make large chains of plastic. They were made into a million pellets.

My brother and sister pellets and I were melted together and put into a mold to make my beautiful, shiny and clear bottle shape.

We then went on a roller coaster ride. It was in a manufacturing plant. We travelled on a conveyor belt, and were filled with some sweet, bubbly liquid. I loved playing with those bubbles, popping them and watching them with wonder. I was just a kid, you see. The roller coaster ride was a bubbly fun. We first got shiny labels. I stood very still to make sure that my label was looking nice and straight. That was a good thing, since they were discarding the bottles with crooked labels.

They then put us in new boxes. We were put at the back of a truck. We went for a long road trip. This was very fun. I wanted to look outside, but there were no windows. Nevertheless, the excitement in my box was palpable. Once in a while, I would also get to pop a bubble from the juice inside of me.

Once I reached my destination, I was removed from the box, and stored in a beautiful freezer. It was clean, shiny and clear. Everyone could see me as I stood proud and straight in my spot. I didn’t know what to expect. A human came by and opened the fridge. I was very nervous. He picked my neighbor up and left. As I watched my shop, I saw humans coming and going, and picking a bottle or a bag of their choice.  “Oh!”, thought I. How interesting would it be to be selected from hundreds of other bottles. I was trying to look my best as I stood in my spot! My neighbor laughed at me. He said that he was way more popular than me and he would be picked before me. I was annoyed. I hoped against hope that I would be picked first.

A human opened our fridge door. He was looking at an aisle above ours. My neighbor and I vied for his attention. As we stood tall, my neighbor pushed me. Uh oh! I fell sideways, although I couldn’t fall far due to my tight surroundings. My fall caught the human’s attention. He bent to steady me, and then, after a moment’s decision making, he picked me out of the freezer and shut the door!

Wow! I was finally selected. As I stuck my tongue out at my neighbor, the human walked over to the counter and paid for me. I was so proud that he spent all that money for me.

My human took me home. He kept me in his fridge. Now, this wasn’t as clean as my previous home, but I wasn’t about to complain. My human would pull me out of the fridge ever so often to drink from me. I felt a bond.

One day, he took a swig from me and then stared. I was empty. He looked disappointed. I felt sorry for him. After all, we have become friends. Now what would he do?

My human walked across the room, and opened a trash can. He dropped me in there and shut the lid. I was flabbergasted. No, no no! This couldn’t be happening. I was shiny and beautiful. And here I was among junk. Rotting food and smelly alcohol wipes started making my beautiful label wet. I tried to squeeze to a side to avoid the dirt. But it was no use. Soon my human “friend” opened the trash can and dropped more junk on me. Cleaning supplies stung my skin. I was in trouble.

The next day, the trash can opened. My human took the trash bag out of the can and took it outside. It was a windy day. I thought, “this was my chance”. I decided to make a run for it. As he tried to put me in the outside trash bin, I flew out of the trash bag and rolled across the street. “Hey!”, he yelled. I momentarily felt sad about ditching my friend. But when I turned around, I saw that he had every intention of putting me back in that bag. I made a dash for it.

My human was persistent. He ran across to get me. I tried to get away but he was too fast for me. As I gave him one last look, he put me back in that dreaded bag and shut the lid of the trash can. I sat in darkness, wondering what life had in store for me now.

While I mused, a truck came by and swallowed the contents of the trash can, including me. My trash bag ripped and I fell into the dirty, soiled bottom of the truck. Eww! As I moved to keep myself from getting filthy, I bumped into a rotten egg. “Move, trash!”, said the egg. Then it hit me. I was no longer a shiny, prized bottle. In 3-4 days, I had gone from occupying a prime spot in the store to becoming trash. ‘How can that be?!,” I said out loud. A half-filled water bottle scoffed! “3-4 days?! Consider yourself lucky. I was put in store this morning, and 3 hours later I am already trash. And get this! My human did not even finish the water that was packaged in me.” It was a sobering realization.

The garbage truck dropped me at a large facility. As I awaited my fate, I saw that I was laying next to the half-filled water bottle. The bottle said, “I am scared too. Why don’t we stick together?”. I said, “Sure. You have a name?”. The bottle said “Aqua. And you?”. “Fizzy,” I replied. We cap bumped. I had made a friend.

After a few days, a truck came by and we were placed in it’s rear bed. Aqua and I had stuck our labels together. We stayed close, even though we were bumped and jostled about.

The truck drove us far out of the city. After hours, we came to a stop. A couple more hours later, the truck tilted it’s bed and dumped us in a huge hole in the ground. Aqua and I were thankful that the glue on our labels were still good. We stayed stuck together. We finally landed into what seems like my forever home. And when I say forever, I am talking about 1000 years.

As I mentioned before, whenever our landfill fills up with water, the water-soluble parts of our bodies break out from us. Some of these compounds are very toxic. These toxic compounds mix up and form a mixture called Leachate. The leachate moves through groundwater, soil or streams and makes things toxic. My neighbor, TV, told us that she had heard that humans hate us plastics for all the toxic pollution that we create. But, hey, I didn’t ask for this. My human could have used me for a long time if he wanted. I was still shiny and new when he threw me out!

Aqua and I have become good friends. We have some other friends too. TV is the most informed in our group. We also have laptop, but laptop’s brains were pulled out of her before she was thrown out. She smiles at us, but is otherwise clueless.

TV told us that unlike more organic trash which can be broken down or decomposed from wind, erosion or with microorganisms, we plastics do not decompose. We simply break down into smaller and smaller pieces.

Sometimes we discuss how our fates could have been avoided. Why would humans not reuse our smaller pieces to form new bottles? Well, TV tells us that this does happen. Some bottles are lucky enough to be shredded, melted and reused to form new bottles. This sounds so much better. Although it still seems nonsensical to me. Why all this work just so that a human being can use us for 3 hours or so?

This morning, I had a new thought. I asked Aqua. How can a human afford to spend that much money on buying a bottle just to throw it away three hours later? Aqua and I pondered over it, but we didn’t have an answer. We decided to present our question to TV.

TV only wakes up in the afternoon. She then stays up very late into the night. She said, that’s how she always functioned even during her time with the humans. We posed our burning question to TV. She laughed at our innocence. She had this mindboggling answer for us, that I am still trying to process. She said, “humans do not pay for you. You are free. You come with the drink” The bubbly sweet one in my case and the water in Aqua’s case”. I couldn’t believe it. I was free, and my sole purpose was to carry the drink? But, who paid for my manufacturing, and who will pay for my clean up? Who would pay for all the fuel? TV laughed. “It’s not the consumer that will pay. The company that sells the liquid will pay peanuts for you. What they pay does not represent the actual cost. The environment pays. The animals pay. The poor people who lose their valuable land pay.”

Aqua and I laid our discussions to rest.

References:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1182406945105843

https://futurism.com/plastic-decomposition