Paper or Plastic?

I like to recycle. I pride myself on the fact that I use cloth diapers (most of the time) on my kid, and that when we put the trash out each week we have two big overflowing bins of recycling, and only one garbage can that's often only about half-full. For the most part, I toss every little scrap of paper, plastic, aluminum, or styrafoam that I don't want anymore into the bin. And I have bins all over the house for recycling, so there's not much excuse for anyone to toss it in the trash instead. I like the thought that I'm contributing to this world having a better future. It's not much, but it's a little thing I can do. I also know that my area actually does take it to a recycle center. I've heard that some of the other collection services have you sort it all out, get picky about what they'll even take, and then just take it to the dumpster anyway. Bastards.

But what's starting to really annoy me is how much stuff I am recycling that is plastic or styrafoam. Plastic especially. I see a lot of plastic. My groceries come in plastic bags, which we use as liners for our smaller trash bins. We get way more than we need for that purpose though, so every so often I have a huge bunch of them that I don't have a use for. Fortunately, the store I buy from has a bin where I can bring them to, since that's one thing my recycle collectors won't take. Mind you, I don't even see a stack of paper bags at the grocers anymore. Not that I'd trust the baggers to bag them right anymore anyway, but that's another rant altogether.

But there's all the other crap that I do put in the recycle bin. Cookies come in plastic tubs that keep them all lined up. And then those tubs are wrapped in plastic to keep them "fresh", and that plastic isn't recycleable. Soda comes in cans or plastic containers for the most part. I almost feel more responsible drinking my beer which at least comes in glass bottles!

Is melting down this plastic to make other stuff out of it actually better than some of the stuff we were using say, fifty years ago? Or is it just that plastic is cheap and the saving the environment just isn't good for a company's profit margin? Oh, and planting a few trees doesn't actually make up for putting extra pollutants into the air. No matter how nice it might look in the annual report.

I'm getting really sick and tired of people who think time is money and don't give a damned about anything that doesn't affect them right now. Does no one care anymore? What kind of a world will this be for my son? Or his children, for that matter?