Shame turns to resolve to live green for a better world

I really like Caesar salad. And, at my grocery, it's so utterly convenient. There's this plastic bag, containing cut romaine lettuce. There in the produce section, I also buy tomatoes, which I put in a plastic bag. An avocado and another plastic bag. Oh, and some green onion, and yet another bag. I buy it, and the clerk puts four plastic bags in a plastic grocery bag. Home, I take the plastic bags out of the plastic bag.

I open the salad and dump the lettuce in a bowl. Inside the plastic salad bag is another plastic bag. And, in that plastic bag are four additional plastic bags: one with croutons, one with pepper, one with grated cheese and one with salad dressing. Now onion, tomato and avocado. Voila! I have salad!

And that's when I really see it. On my kitchen counter are nine plastic bags. Trash.

I throw it away. In a kitchen trash can lined with, yep, another plastic bag. Twice a week some nice folks come with a truck and take all the plastic away. In this, I'm typically American: It is my right and expectation to have my discarded plastic "taken away." Oh, and those same nice folks take away paper, cartons, branches and other lawn debris, and even the occasional toaster or coffee pot that is no longer working.

Taken away. I don't know what that means, exactly. I only know that my trash is gone. That's the important thing.

Sometimes it just hits you. Something so obvious. It has always been there, but, yikes, this time it jumps out and slaps you in the face.

Lately, and for reasons I don't understand, I've been noticing trash.

I'm not much of a newshound, so, maybe you, Good Reader, already know what I learned this week. A patient informed me that discarded plastic bags -- and other plastic -- have formed huge swirling continents of debris where ocean currents collide. That it's just sitting out there. Swirling.

So, I head to the Internet. There are countless sites and articles describing this mess, but I'm quoting below from The Independent Environment (www.independent.co.uk):

"A 'plastic soup' of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said. ... The vast expanse of debris -- in effect the world's largest rubbish dump -- is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting 'soup' stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan."

When I read this, I was ashamed. I'm pretty sure shame is the right response.

I went to Green Bay, Wis., last week. Flying into Milwaukee, our plane approached from the east over Lake Michigan. I remember feeling proud about the ways Americans finally responded to the despicable pollution of these lakes. My seatmate casts a sanguine blanket over my pride, however, by reminding me that eating fish from some of these lakes still is not advisable.

Sheesh, humans are messy. We can do better. I can do better.

I can and should expect more of myself than this. It's official, and long overdue: I'm going to buy eight or 10 of those canvas bags, keep them in the back of my car and stop using plastic bags. I'm going to eschew convenience, and buy fresh lettuce and either buy a bottle of Caesar, or make my own. It's time to educate myself about Living Green and to confront myself about long-nurtured laziness and entitlement.

I go to the grocery again. Young Joseph, 9 in two weeks, informs me that his favorite chips are not packaged in a compostable sack. He learned that in school. Well, every little bit helps.

To be arrogantly alienated from the Earth is to practice alienation from self.

Because it's all connected.

Always.

Nothing can simply be "taken away."

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling Wellness Center in Las Vegas and the author of "Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing" (Stephens Press). His columns appear on Sundays. Contact him at skalas@ reviewjournal.com.