#110 Blisterpack

The other day I was opening a new something. You might have thought it was an expensive piece of technology, the way they had it encased in impenetrable, impermeable, and impregnable plastic. But no, it was a showerhead. Why does everything have to be sheathed in form-fitting plastic these days? Maybe some 21st century Nostradamus already has the future figured out and has staked his descendents claim in landfills across the nation cause if current trends continue those puppies are going to be mighty darn full of non-biodegradable plastic. Plastic, as I’m sure you are aware, is a petroleum product. So what do you think is going to happen after all our S.U.HumVees are done burning up all the readily available oil? Well, first we’ll go to petroleum shales, then we’ll mine coal tars— then we’ll have to mine and recycle discarded plastic. And the containers that once held motor oil will be rendered to oil themselves. Maybe by then some scientific genius will have invented a Humvee with its own trash-compactor plastic-melter petroleum-renderer built right in, and we’ll be able to head to the landfill fueling station and shovel up a full tank.
When that day of reckoning comes, I hope the remnants of blisterpacks are the first to burn. I have ripped more hangnails and torn more wrist ligaments trying to open these scourges of creation than I ever did trying to slip the seal on a cardboard box. And for what? Is it really that easy to line every item up in a package in little wells and then fuse a counterbubble top piece into place so that no one without bolt cutters can open the damn thing? I guess maybe I can see an elaborate electronic device that retails for over a hundred bucks. Sure, create some special packaging that will keep its components shock-absorbed and scratch-proofed within their little plastic bubble nests. It kind of works for eggs in egg cartons so why not give it a go on an Ipod? But a freaking showerhead? A recyclable cardboard box and some non-cfc biodegradable packing peanuts and I’m good, bro.
I went down to city hall the other day to pick up my free water saving kits. They had about a hundred showerheads loose in a big cardboard box, floating in a pool of packing peanuts. I took a couple home and put them on. They worked good, so I got the new showerhead I’d purchased and its blisterpack shrapnel, stuffed the mess into a shopping bag and took it back to the supermarket.
They opened the sack, saw the showerhead, the plumbers tape, the Chinese instructions, the bulbous plastic remnants and the one tiny corner of paper that I managed to save when I was mutilating the blisterpack open. They gave me back my money. Why? Cause that little piece of paper had the Universal Product Code on it. So now this item, perfectly good mind you, will sit in a jumbled return bin till it really is damaged, the company that made it will take it back, and the whole damn thing; product, product code and pernicious plastic product packaging, will go into the landfill. Investing in our future petroleum needs.
America, ya gotta love it.