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My son, Max, age 13, on being told to clean his room: “But you said we can’t recycle this plastic.� He picks up a soda fountain cup that once held Dr. Pepper.

When I was a kid, we drank Big Gulps that came in wax-coated paper. Now, only Chipotle seems to use paper cups still, although McDonald’s is experimenting with cups made from 50% recycled plastic. But in Flagstaff, we can only recycle #1 plastics, usually those with a screw top lid that hold things like laundry soap, Gatorade and dry-roasted peanuts.

“Perhaps you can divide your garbage from recyclables,� I suggest to Max.

“Perhaps, since most of this isn’t recyclable, I should just leave it in my room where it won’t add to the landfill.�

“You’re just going to pile your dirty old cups under your bed? What about when under your bed is full? Will you just wade through a sea of plastic to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night? What if there is a fire?�

“I’ll keep the cups organized,� he promises.

I wonder if this is a good idea, actually. Perhaps we should have to live with our garbage. If there were neither recycling nor trash pickup, maybe we’d be less likely to purchase plastic pens wrapped in plastic, takeout taken home in Styrofoam containers and so many bottles of shampoo, conditioner and mayonnaise. Perhaps, we would be less likely to order chicken on the bone if we had to sleep with the bones too.

We move most of our waste out of sight. Landfills skirt the edges of town. Slurry from mining operations hide behind hills of slag which are hidden behind what remains of the mountain. Uranium is pulled from the edges of the Grand Canyon and trucked under tarps through Flagstaff, toward the Four Corners, into Utah where a town without a name exists just south of Mexican Hat.

You cannot see the buildings except through a steel gate. That short, 75 mph drive-by reveals a glimpse of what might be housing for workers around what looks like a lake made of silver. You can’t slow down to really investigate the mights or looks like. You don’t really want to know why water would be that color.

I wonder if we could see the carbon dioxide that’s particulating in our atmosphere at 400 parts per million, would we rein in our burning of fossil fuels?

If we could smell the remains of 150 years of combustion engines would we long for fresh air?

If we could feel the weight of all those molecules on our backs, we would throw off the very heavy consequences of these invisible, planet-warming fiery reactions?

Maybe we do see and smell and feel these things, but like frogs in that proverbial pot, the heat is being turned up so slowly, we just keep swimming circles in our comfortable waters, eyes closed.

We exiled our garbage to unseen quarters. Now, it appears, the garbage returns, hiding itself from the naked eye. The news is atwitter with headlines alerting us that scientists have found microplastics in most of our food and in most animal bodies, including our own.

The spring 2023 issue of Harvard Medicine reports, "We encounter microplastics everywhere: from trash, dust, fabrics, cosmetics, cleaning products, rain, seafood, produce, table salt and more. Little wonder that microplastics have been detected throughout the human body, including in the blood, saliva, liver, kidneys and placenta.�

In the oceans, the smallest among us nosh on small bits of plastic. It’s bad for them, because it fills them up with nonnutritive substances, which eventually kills them. And it’s bad for us for reasons researchers are just beginning to speculate. Microplastics disrupt our systems � thyroid, endocrine, reproductive � inhibiting natural reactions and responses. They’re the cockblockers of the microscopic world.

There isn’t really a good avenue for getting microplastics out because they are "in" everything. Beer, salt, salmon. They fall on us as clouds of smog and they bind with heavy metals taking a heavier toll on meaty flesh. According to the National Library of Medicine, because of our “culture of single-use plastic, rapid and inexpensive plastic production and non-circular economic models led to the creation of over 368 million metric tons of single-use plastic in 2019.�

Perhaps you’re like me and are a bit of a radical optimist. Perhaps you can imagine the slimming effects of eating plastic � feel full without gaining an ounce! Soon, we will be lined in plastic, all the better to keep microorganisms like tuberculosis or COVID from getting in.

Our streets will be lined in plastic � perhaps no need to regrade them! Even our cars could be wrapped in plastic, preventing exhaust from escaping into our warming atmosphere. We could even wrap our frogs in plastic � they’re some of the most sensitive creatures around.

We could, perhaps, go back to a time when if you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Or, even better, with a planet lined with plastic, nothing will leak, nothing will touch anything else, no bodies will touch.

Maybe we could be like my teenage son in his room, the door shut against the pots clanging as I cook. He can’t hear me with so much plastic lining his room. It’s like a sound studio in there. I yell loudly, “Dinner is ready,� but what with his ocean of plastic cups, he doesn’t hear me. And why feed him at all? I was only serving salmon with plastic for dinner, seasoned with a little plasticky salt, accompanied by a plastic imbued beer.