My son Max is 13. Here’s how our conversation goes when I tell him to clean his room:

“But you said we can’t recycle this plastic.” He picks up a soda-fountain cup that once held Dr. Pepper complete with plastic lid and plastic straw.

“Perhaps you can divide your garbage from recyclables and put each in the appropriate bin,” I say.

“Perhaps, since most of this isn’t recyclable, I should just leave it in my room where it won’t add to the landfill.”

“You’re just going to pile your dirty old cups under your bed? What about when under your bed is full? Will you just wade through a sea of plastic to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night? What if there is a fire?”

“I’ll keep the cups organized,” he says.

*

I wonder if this is a good idea, actually. Perhaps we should have to live with our garbage. If there were neither recycling nor trash pick-up, maybe we’d be less likely to purchase plastic pens wrapped in plastic, takeout taken home in Styrofoam containers, and so many bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and mayonnaise.

We move most of our waste out of sight. Landfills skirt the edges of town. We mine ore from mountains and bury the slag underground. We pull uranium from the edges of the Grand Canyon and truck it across the desert in the dead of night. The recycling trucks drive up from Phoenix to gather our recyclable detritus, shoving more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which, of course, we can’t see.

I wonder if we could see the carbon dioxide that’s particulating in our atmosphere at four-hundred and some odd parts per million, would we rein in our burning of fossil fuels? If we could smell the remains of a hundred and fifty years of combustion engines would we long for fresh air? If we could feel the weight of all those molecules on our backs, would we throw off the very heavy consequences of these invisible, planet-warming, fiery reactions? Maybe we do sense these things, but like frogs in that proverbial pot, when the heat is turned up so slowly that they die, we just keep swimming circles in our waters, eyes closed.

My own eyes! It’s not just Max who is the problem. I encase my eyeballs in plastic contact lenses every day. I also order plastic reading glasses from the plastic distribution center, aka Amazon. I receive a box of four in a plastic-coated cardboard box. Inside, a plastic slip covers the lenses, which are themselves plastic.

We exile our garbage to unseen quarters. Now, it appears, the garbage returns, still hiding itself from the naked eye. Scientists have found microplastics in our bodies. Harvard Medicine reports, “We encounter microplastics everywhere: from trash, dust, fabrics, cosmetics, cleaning products, rain, seafood, produce, table salt. Little wonder that microplastics have been detected throughout the human body, including in the blood, saliva, liver, kidneys, and placenta.”

In the oceans, the smallest among us nosh on small bits of plastic. It’s bad for them, because it fills them up with nonnutritive substances, which eventually kills them. And it’s bad for us. Microplastics disrupt our systems—thyroid, endocrine, reproductive—inhibiting natural reactions and responses. Plastics are the cock blockers of the microscopic world.

*

There isn’t really a good avenue for getting microplastics out because they are ‘in’ everything. Beer, salt, salmon. Perhaps you’re like me and are a bit of a radical optimist. Perhaps you can imagine the slimming effects of eating plastic—feel full without gaining an ounce! Soon, we will be lined in plastic, all the better to keep microorganisms like tuberculosis or Covid from getting in. Our streets will be lined in plastic—perhaps no need to repave them! Even our cars could be wrapped in plastic, preventing exhaust from escaping into our warming atmosphere. We could even wrap our frogs in plastic—they are some of the most sensitive creatures around.

We could perhaps create a planet lined with plastic, nothing will leak, no bodies will touch. Maybe we could be like my teenage son in his room, the door shut against the pots clanging in the kitchen as I cook. It’s like a sound studio in there. I yell, “Dinner is ready,” but what with his ocean of plastic cups, he doesn’t hear me. And why feed him at all? I was only serving salmon with plastic for dinner, seasoned with a little plasticky salt.

___

Nicole Walker is the author of the forthcoming memoir How to Plant a Billion Trees and craft book Writing the Hard Stuff, as well as Processed Meats: Essays on Food, Flesh and Navigating Disaster, The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet, Sustainability: A Love Story, Where the Tiny Things Are, Egg, Micrograms, Quench Your Thirst with Salt and This Noisy Egg.

Artwork by Michael Todd Cohen