Dear Editor:
Anything is possible if the right people are activated or employed; and everything has a beginning or end. To do nothing, to be apathetic is unacceptable, for that is exactly how we accelerated to the point of shall we say a dishonorable condition of cumulative effects upon our life and all things in it. We have been violated by the free market system of undemocratic corporate for profit motives, with no thought of impacts and exactly how all these materials and products would be handled or prevented from contaminating our landscapes, waterways and the great ocean. So we see it was lack of good government that allowed it to proceed to a crisis state, although, a crisis still not properly acknowledged by authority.
According to N.J.A.C. 7:26A-1.3, “source separation” or “ source separated” means, the process by which recyclable materials are separated at the point of generation by the generator thereof, from solid waste for the purposes of recycling.
Much of the blame is failure of authority to implement and enforce Mandatory Source Separation Laws on every level, from State, County and Municipal. The Mandates also intended to be organically linked to other laws and ordinances in relation; for example, street cleaning, property maintenance especially in commercial districts, and best practices in sanitation. What we have instead is streets, gutters, storm drains, sidewalks and parking lots littered with debris most of it plastics. These conditions are allowed to remain without enforcements due to “political convenience” of exactly what government’s intention is designed for to prevent. The problem is systematic which requires government, it cannot be passed off as some individual goal overall, this mindset only helps the violator and the real culprit of corporate irresponsibility.
The plastic bag ban would be the first step hopefully in a progressive stage to end the crime of plastic pollution unneeded products of convenience, which have many hidden costs all passed off to the citizen. Plastic waste is directly responsible for the failure of recycling overall, that and the lack of enforcements on all levels.
“As the value of recycling continues to fall the markets are being forced harder to clean up their waste-streams in order to keep the viability of the marketing of their end products alive. Parsippany for years had been using a recycling market that didn’t care about quality, which went bankrupt, and bad habits were developed in Parsippany where they accepted everything”.
These bad habits are still with us and things have gotten worse not better. Excuses like private property, other cultures, town is too big, can longer be used. We are all connected. A sad conclusion can be drawn, that concepts of private property have actually accelerated destruction of concepts of community; the street and common places have become no-man’s land.
In essence this is what petroleum into plastic is in violation of:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States..
Our common defense against plastic pollution is nonexistent and the posterity of future generations stands degraded, injured and in violation of the general welfare in the name of corporate irresponsibility and profits.
