A specific instance of egregious corporate sociopathy in one word: PLASTICS!

Plastics. I don’t remember the character who imparted this career advice — “Plastics” — to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. Someone did, though, and here we are, nearly 60 years later, facing the consequences.

“Nearly 60 years later”? A speck in time for the existence of our planet but a domestic conundrum for me last week, when I went shopping for a few things, among them V8 juice.

My neighborhood shopping is graced by at least four big markets within three blocks of my apartment. It’s almost indecent, these riches. I can buy all sorts of exotica; pomegranate juice comes immediately to mind, although it has never landed in my basket. I can buy fruit I’ve never heard of before, and a remarkable variety of relatively tasteless tomatoes. And tasty cucumbers.

It’s amazing, and more amazing is how blasé I’ve become, pausing for excitement only when I see an edible I’ve never seen before, and a house brand of excellent products half the price of identical name brand products — both nesting together on the same shelves, for easy comparison.

This opulence preserves my boycotts of certain popular name brands. Abject apologies by their CEOs who made foolish and offensive statements, usually political and inhumane, do not win back my patronage. Ever. I am a rock. (By the way, this is the Achilles heel of capitalism: multiple consumer choices. I don’t have to buy one pasta brand; there are so many pasta brands. And I never have used Amazon. For anything.)

Really, I have been blessed by two gods: Mother Nature and the island at the center of the world.

But now I’ve run into trouble. For years, I bought large (recyclable) cans of V8 juice, produced by the Campbell’s Company. And for those years, I did not have to pay attention to the long and many shelves of juices in large plastic containers. Because we are no longer Benjamin Braddock or maybe we’ve always been Benjamin Braddock: he never did find a career of any kind, never mind plastics, during the time frame of The Graduate. Whatever he did to make a living is after the end credits.

In any case, we all recognize the dangers of plastics molded into any form. Juice containers, non-stick pots and pans. We’ve all seen the horrid photos of oceans crammed with plastic, and read about dolphin mothers who are passing plastic onto their nursing babies.

It seems like waste plastic has the shelf life of uranium. That is, sort of forever. So, without straining either my budget or my moral core, I’ve avoided buying any plastics for a long time.

But as of this week, I am paying attention to those shelves of plastic juice containers because Morton Williams, where I bought my large cans of V8, no longer carries cans. Every juice is sealed up in plastic.

Fairway, too (now a link on the ShopRite chain). No cans. Only plastic.

What the fuck is wrong with corporate CEOs (pejorative question) who are years late in catching up to ecological truths? Indeed, they seem to be regressing at this fraught moment when their customers are painfully aware of what is happening to our planet and the disastrous downsides of the easy-peasy miracle products we never have had to think about. Until maybe 60 years ago, when we heard the warnings and thought we and our earth had plenty of time to change course.

Since The Graduate, there have been lots of books and several terrific films about the indifference of profitable corporations to the welfare of this earth and its life forms. A Civil Action and Dark Waters are two of them. Both are riveting tutorials on the ho-hum sociopathy of mightily profitable corporations, and the awesomely patient warriors who challenge them — environmental lawyers.

Plastics. The only bit of plastic I will be using to eschew buying plastics is my credit card. Or is that statement too too meta?