Friday, August 17, 2007

Being The Environmentalist

It's probably an urban legend - but I'll be damned if I'm going to let a bunch of defenseless fish and birds be strangled by this 6-pack 8-pack ring.

What an odd habit to have, that I feel responsible for cutting these up. Do I take the bus to work, make sure I recycle at every possible chance or bring my own bags to the super market? Nope, but I certainly won't let a Coke 6 pack 8-pack ring pass me by.

Why is that? Probably marketing...

--Ben

5 comments:

  1. While I think it is great that you do this... this one looks like a 8-pack,

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  2. Dude, I'm saving the environment here - I've got no time for counting or other tricky tasks like that ;-).

    Nice catch, thanks.

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  3. I always feel obligated to do this, too. I always resent it, because I feel like it's so unlikely that my plastic-ring thing, buried in a landfill in a trash bag full of nasty junk, is really going to trap/kill any wildlife. But I still do it.

    This brings to mind a classic Simpsons moment... In The Old Man and The Lisa, when Mr. Burns hooks together millions of six-pack rings, to catch millions of fish. Mmmm... Slurry... *drool*

    Incidentally, while searching for the details for that Simpsons reference, I ran across this:
    http://digg.com/general_sciences/Six_Pack_Plastic_Deforms_a_Turtle
    Poor thing!

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  4. That's right - I forgot about the Simpsons reference. Man that was a good episode.

    How much you want to bet that cutting up the rings end up killing more animals than leaving them whole?

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  5. I've been wondering the same thing! As I stand there, carefully cutting every ring such that there is no closed circle/diamond anywhere on the thing, I *always* wonder if I'm doing all that work for nothing, and sometimes wonder if I'm somehow making it more harmful.

    Heck, if any animal tries to swallow it, it wouldn't be too good for them. But really, we've got to draw the line somewhere. If we want to protect the animals from our hazardous trash, we have to burn it all, or enclose it in something they can't get into. Neither of which is going to happen.

    Ooh, or we could put it all in one area (how about Canada?), and enclose it in a giant dome. :)

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