This bookmark illustrates what’s wrong with our world

April 10, 2020 by Joshua
in Nature, Visualization

I found this bookmark at my mom’s house. She and my stepfather don’t remember buying it so my mom figures someone gave it to them.

Here’s the front. Don’t the flowers look pretty? When I was a kid we’d sometimes pick flowers or leaves and press them between pages of books, so making a bookmark of them makes sense.

They aren’t flowers, though. They’re pictures of flowers, printed onto paper, laminated.

Here’s the back:

Whoever printed this bookmark didn’t have to print “50% recycled / 20% post consumer paper.” I imagine they anticipated doing so would help sell bookmarks.

They created something to look like nature that anyone could make themselves, promoting apparent non-waste, covered in plastic. It’s total waste. Anyone could use a scrap of paper to achieve its function.

It’s unnecessary plastic waste designed to look like nature that pollutes nature and leads the buyer to feel it’s the opposite. Presumably people buy these things. It reminds me of my post about plastic AstroTurf increasingly resembling and replacing grass, Plastic grass for kids? What are we doing?.

We’re replacing nature with pollution and patting ourselves on the back for it.

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