@Ptim Pellerin made a passionate comment around this topic the other day, and agree with him. In the late 80s, an old project manager at a company I worked with used to carefully collect every scrap of bubble wrap that protected incoming products. He’d look at us younger ones and say, “You kids will be sorry one day.” He wasn’t just talking about wasted fuel from making and shipping all that plastic. He saw further. He was right. That bubble wrap—and every plastic bag, bottle, wrapper, and straw we still casually discard—doesn’t disappear. It fractures into microplastics that now saturate Gaia’s oceans, soils, rivers, air, and the bodies of nearly every living thing. Production burns fossil fuels and pours greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The waste chokes marine life, starves seabirds, contaminates the food chain, and permanently alters ecosystems that took millions of years to balance. Plastic doesn’t just litter the planet. It poisons the living systems that keep Earth habitable. People still shrug: “I don’t use that much.” Or they grumble about paper straws while insisting plastic bags are better because they’re stronger. Every single piece adds to the mountain. The cumulative effect of billions of “not that much” choices is what is quietly killing coral reefs, filling the guts of whales, and seeding microplastics into the rain that falls on your children’s future. The old man saw it coming. Gaia is already feeling it. The Earth you leave for your offspring depends on what you choose to use—or refuse—today.