Friday 26 February 2010

Long Living Carrier Bags

Staring at a carrier bag in my kitchen the other day a thought struck me. I'd recently read that plastic carrier bags can last for up to one thousand years before they degrade!
Wow.
That's obviously longer than I'll last.
So, years from now (say five hundred years) I'll be long long gone. No-one will remember me or will have heard of me (unless I do something dramatic like shoot Tony Blair - which I probably won't), but that carrier bag, the one in my kitchen (and many others) - will still be around! It will be lying in some landfill site somewhere being gently flicked by the wind and tugged at by Gulls. And I'll be long forgotten.
Makes you think.

4 comments:

breadgirl said...

Hi J P T
About 10 years ago there was a carrier bag, from one of the more popular supermarkets here, caught on a branch near the top of a very tall tree just outside our back fence. Some strong winds had lifted it to unexpected heights and impaled it on a branch. For at least a year, this bag cavorted and danced in the wind, rain, sun and snow. We wondered at its strength. Then everyone, including said supermarket, got environment aware. Said supermarket bags became so thin that it was near impossible to carry your groceries from shop to car before the bag broke and spilled your shopping all over the floor. Now I believe the same supermarket dispenses bags that are somewhere between those two strengths. It is a sobering thought to think that our supermarket will be remembered long after we are just a withered branch on someone's family tree!

I enjoyed this post and the previous one, too. Thanks and God bless you.

James Higham said...

Especially if you write your life story on the inside of that carrier bag.

Life in Egypt said...

I wonder if the dinasaurs thought when mrs dinasuar laid her egg. that is gonna last for millions of years as long as we /I lay them under a live volcano. some twat in a few million years will find and say ah look the rats wiped out the dinasaurus rex. look at the hole in the shell. fuck did they have pnuematic drills in them days as well.
now if we plant the plastic bags in an area lets say mount etna. there will be nothing left of the plastic bag. not unless we give them to mr bin man to send to the recycle plant in ebbw vale to make park benches and plastic posts for our farmers to keep the sheep in the field they put them in. look in myegpt.co.uk website on Nile pollution. they have no worries about if the plastic bag is gonna be here in 1000 years they just burn them. no monetary value you see.

Life in Egypt said...

First comment. I notice me old china is still trying to get rid of his /her plastic blow up dollies. I wonder if that too will be here in 1000 years.
you can Imagine some poor sod from another planet. Strange people these
all thye sex the had and the children never grew especially miss cindy. and action man.