My Sprite Can

I was sitting out on a dock on a small lake today with my special ladyfriend. I had recently finished a can of Sprite and set it down beside me. It had fallen over a few times, so we rested it sideways between two planks of the dock. After we messed around splashing each other for a few minutes a breeze dislodged the Sprite can from its place of rest and it started blowing down the dock. I hesitated for a fleeting moment before I got up and chased after the can, but I was too late. The can rolled off the dock and into the lake. As it floated away from us I had a glimmering hope that it might eventually drift close to an area of the shore where I could reclaim the can and preserve my integrity as an eco-friendly individual. It became clear, however, that the can was not going to float anywhere near where I could grab it.

I had become the very thing I hate. Even though it was an accident, I was disappointed with myself. That is another piece of synthetic human garbage that has marred the face of nature. We see this kind of pollution all the time: fast food bags sitting on the side of the road, beer bottles lying under a few centimeters of muddy water near the bank of a creek, etc. If you're at all like me, you sometimes involuntarily conjecture about the type of people who pollute in this manner, out of sheer laziness and disregard for others. I don't think I've been hanging out with this person. It's one of those common instances where we can spot the crime all the time but never the culprit. Take urinals at public restrooms, for example, the ones that still have unflushed pee in them. Usually, men will flush their urinal when other men are present. But when nobody is looking, why bother touching that contaminated piece of metal if you don't have to? Besides, the chances are probably about 33% that you had to flush somebody else's urine before you could go yourself.

The sad problem is that my Sprite can is probably never going to be picked up and deposited in a proper receptacle. There's a good chance that it will wash ashore or get trapped in some pocket of water and sit there for years fading. Of the few chance people that might wander off the beaten path and end up near the place where my can ends up, maybe one or two people will actually spot it. And if they are at all like me, they probably won't think to pick it up but leave it to lie where it lays. People don't like to pick up other people's garbage, and that's understandable. Why should we assume other people's responsibility? The years will go by. A new president will come into office. A couple of decades might pass. Flying cars will be zooming over the lake that might by then be drained to feed some fountain for some luxury casino resort and the can will still be there, buried underneath a shallow layer of sediment deposit. Centuries will pass by as if nothing to the abandoned Sprite can, all because I could not catch it before it fell off the dock.

Think about that factory where the Sprite can was manufactured and shipped out for distribution. Just that factory alone. Single out that one day when that Sprite can left the factory. Of all of the cans that left the factory that day, where are they all going to end up? How far might one of those cans eventually travel away from it's place of factory origin? How deep will the deepest buried can reach into the earth before it decomposes? How many years will will pass until they vanish into a completed form of decay? Their lives as Sprite cans will be short. They will quickly be consumed as refreshments at a party or at work or at picnics by the lake. But that stage is fleeting. The vending machines and the store shelves will be restocked in a week. What happens after all that? What happens when they become stagnant garbage? What happens for the next 500 years?