this is a private conviction of mine btw - that the entire industrial output of the consumer goods sector circa 1995 is outweighed at this point by the output of factories that got an order for a product 20 years ago and just never stopped making it
i have absolutely no data to back this up other than that i have seen the same horrible electronics on the market for a decade after their usefulness, and i currently can walk into a store and see 50 one-amp USB chargers. extrapolating: there is so much fucking plastic.
i think it goes: factory produces a heavenly amount of plastic, sells it to an american distributor for $100, distributor sells it to dying late-capitalism retail chain, of which there are millions, for $120. total amount of money involved is $20; nobody cares whether its selling
i think there are just all these factories pumping out absolutely unfathomable, indescribable amounts of plastic, all of which gets thrown away by the retailers, who shrug off the inscrutably tiny expense
and every couple months they cycle to a new plastic thing to put by the cash register until they cycle back to the original plastic thing that never sold, and this keeps going until we are out of petroleum
i honest to god believe there is more petroleum locked up in things that nobody ever, for one single second liked or desired than in things that were wanted.
