There are only two places in this town where you can purchase bedding plants and then for only about two months in the spring. One is a hardware store and the other a farm supply store. Yesterday, I had to go to the farm store for more bird seed and I made a quick pass through the flower section. Most of the plants were at some stage of impending death. This was partly due to the drying sun and wind that they have been exposed to and also because they had not been hardened off. A bigger reason, I believe, is because of the incompetence of the staff. I saw several plants, for instance, that need shade; but they had been displayed directly in the south facing sun. There is no doubt in my mind that when these pathetic looking flowers do not sell, they will simply be thrown in the trash – plastic pot, soil, and all. I know this because a few years back I had worked during the spring at a Costco and that is what they did.
Who has not heard by now, about the billions of tons of plastic in our oceans? If the human race was conscious at all, we would have stopped producing these plastic bottles and containers immediately upon that discovery. We would have said, Oh,no! Look at what we have done. Let us stop at once and see what we can do to fix this and to do better in the future.
The problem is that most of the world is not conscious. Most of the world is apathetic and most are selfish. The main problem of course, is that the companies continue to manufacture them. There are very few manufacturers who have switched to recyclable materials, but few people bother to recycle, or the containers end up in landfills anyway. All of us could easily put a stop to the production of plastics by simply REFUSING TO BUY THOSE THINGS THAT COME IN PLASTIC CONTAINERS. It is an easy solution really; but almost no one is willing to give up the consumerism that they have become so attached to.
I begin most of my plants from seeds these days. I save, wash, and re-use the plastic pots that I have collected over the years. The pots will long outlive me; however, and they will probably end up buried in a landfill after I am gone. There are so many ways that we can all reduce the amount of plastic we are contributing to the planet, but that would require all people to actually care.
