I was in Chinatown for the Chinese New Year celebrations scheduled today. Some traditions may go back hundreds or even thousands of years, but plastic pollution doesn’t.

Vendors sold these factory-produced tubes that launched plastic confetti into the air. That is, that polluted. The confetti lingered in the air for a few seconds. The plastic will pollute the environment for millennia. Parents buy these polluting tubes for kids, who learn to pay to pollute and associate it with fun or some cultural traditions that plastic pollution has nothing to do with.

We have become a society where we celebrate in garbage.

It’s tempting to think, “Oh but it’s fun! Josh, don’t be such a spoil sport.”

People were having no more fun with these polluting toys than without. Like fentanyl or social media, they just give a jolt of euphoria while making you dependent on outside stimulation for emotional experiences. That dependence means we experience overall less joy and fun in life, and have to pay for it.

Meanwhile garbage cans filled with packaging and the money people paid funded creating more plastic and extracting more fossil fuels.

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I like bright colors too, but the world was full of more bright colors before we paved it over. We could restore more bright colors by restoring a world where birds, bees, flowers, and other life supplied it, instead of death. What else is plastic than death? Poison?

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