Have you heard the one about the fish, the feed, and the poisoning of pet food? Are you sick of hearing these sorts of things and wondering whether or not the next thing you buy for home use and consumption is going to poison your family? I am. I'm tired of having to wonder; pesticides are bad, germicides are bad, organics are supposed to be some of the safest foods around but who knows how safe they really are? Are they grown under sterile conditions? These days no one can vouch for the soil, air, or water. All three are likely to be just as poisoned as the stuff we're trying to get away from. The substance we're most recently hearing about is melamine, used as a component of plastics and pesticides.

Personally I've got nothing against either industry. Do I feel that we waste too much plastic in the course of daily life? Yup. Do I agree with the commercials that plastics are necessary in some industries and that they've saved literally millions of lives and that the use of plastics and technology makes society as a whole better? Yup. Where's the balance? Where can we say that we want some from column A and some from B, and skip the side order of pollution? We can't; they go hand in hand. There should be something else in the middle, something that allows us to maximize the benefits while minimizing the harm. I guess that it's not good business practice just yet... The time and cost in reworking all those factories and procedures would cut down on the availability of all those neat little widgets that we just gotta have the second we want them.

I heard that the hard plastic packaging that's been the bane of so many people is on the way out; that by next Christmas we'll once again be able to open them without a jaws-of-life. I'm looking forward to that. I'd also like to look forward to a time when we'll be able to send a bottle of shampoo cross-country without jumping through special postal regulations. Did you know that it is an 11,000 fine per instance of shipping liquids/hazards without going through those hoops? If they caught you. That is, it was 11,000 a few years ago when I last was current with US Postage rates. I was going through my issue of Leadership in Action (melaleuca) this week and one of the featured profiles really caught my eye. The lady joined for the products- she liked them, they worked for her and her family- and since she didn't want any of the old stuff around anymore she boxed it all up and set it out for the trashman. We're talking windex, lysol, bath/body stuff; nothing seriously out of normal range. And come trash pickup time, the box was refused because everything in it was classified as a hazardous substance. OSHA regulations require that cleaners in most companies have to use protective gear against what's in these bottles, and housewives/househusbands are using it every day without a second thought.

I'm tired of wondering where the next poisoning news is going to come from. Everything's bad for us; growth hormones in the meat, pesticides in the produce, salmonella in the dairy, nasty stuff in partially thawed and refrozen foods of any sort. Mercury in our fish, poison in the water, greenhouse warming from commuting to our jobs which may or may not be fulfilling- I'll keep a wide open mind on that one because for as many jobs suck the life out of you there are those that are equally soul-enriching.

We've become so dependant on all of this stuff. I can't help ranting about it sometimes. People have forgotten how to fix up what they have to make it last longer, how to stretch things. Lose a button or rip a sleeve? No need to mend it, no need to at the minimum tear it up for cleaning rags. Just toss it. Buy a new shirt and a bundle of brand new rags at Stuffmart for a low, low price. Then go and bitch about how the cost of everything just builds up, and why does the city need to find a new landfill, and why don't the trashtrucks allow unlimited garbage every pickup day anymore?