free frē/

adverb without cost or payment.

I'm taking issue with the "without cost" bit.

You bought the sno-cone, but the skinny red straw was FREE

You went to the fire station; they gave the kiddo the plastic hat for FREE

The samples of food and drink (cups and spoons included) were FREE

The "Buy Recycled" bumper sticker = FREE

Straws = dumb things are always FREE

Balloons and curly ribbon = FREEEEEE!

Wow. Talk about value-add.

What if all of that disposable plastic had to be purchased outright by the consumer?

Turn around the "brought your own - you get a discount" system, to "You need a spoon? No problem, that'll be twenty five cents" "A Straw? Sure, ten cents please".

And for crying out loud, those spoons should be bamboo and the straws should be paper - you know, NOT trash - things that can actually be converted into invaluable, usable compost.

Why not?

All of that plastic stuff - repugnant though it may be - wasn't conjured by FREE-magic.

Making those items involved things like "technology" and "materials" and "labor" and "shipping".

They are actual physical things that cost actual money and no part of it is FREE. Not on the front end, or the back.

Money spent on the making and the shipping, and money spent on countless (futile feeling) efforts to combat the litter that results from making single use items out of plastic.

We're actively manufacturing and giving out free GARBAGE - because that's what plastic is.

And we're doing it like crazy.

How dumb is that?

All the plastic straws, and the plastic hats in the collection above? Those are pieces of plastic kids traded in exchange for Raffle Tickets at a local Country Fair last weekend. They handed over the hats saying things like "I have three others at home, I don't need it" and about the straws for the snow cones, I repeatedly heard "I don't need it".

Listen up: They don't need it.

This guy?