In the city where I grew up, Cremona, in northern Italy, the garbage is now being separated according to strict recycling rules. Each type of waste has a specific day in an infinite loop of weekly reincarnation: suddenly tuesday is greenday, wednesday is organicday, friday is plasticday. To keep an image of neatness, the garbage is put out at specific times in the nights and with the beginning of a garbage time zone, the city changes completely: pavements are filled with bags laying, standing, overthrowing. When walking home from a party or from a beer with friends you have to slalom around or to skip them and, if you happen to be one of those sneaky nosy person, you can even count exactly how much waste your neighbor has produced. Before Covid19 appeared in the world, the night had belonged to the moon, to party goers, lost souls and garbage, but it suddenly became very quite as a night curfew was imposed on all Italian cities. Only the moon and the garbage bags were left and neither of them knew how to speak. Of all the garbage reincarnations that happened every week in specific days at certain times, that of plastic waste was a real burden: in the waste world, nobody wanted to be plastic, that would in fact mean a never ending life, a repetitive going from being a plastic bag full of plastic bottles to a plastic bag full of plastic boxes. That loop, forever! This story talks about how a miracle happened and plastic was freed from eternal life.
After a few sequential nights from the enacting of the curfew, plastic bags on the same street side started to realize no more humans were around and, thus, not having anybody else to look at, they started to stare at each other - it was a bit like when you turn off the lights and you realize that the stars are all over. Without saying a word, plastic bags could scan each other, see how filled up they were, what kind of water bottles were stuck in their stomach and what mixed material of unknown origin had cause the indigestion. They started to smell each other too, and in the lack of words, to play with each other by rolling up and over. Most of the fun was deserved for garbage bags located at the upper side of a hilly street: rolling down was amazing, a real shot of adrenaline. It was even cooler when they realized that no matter how fast they went, nothing would hurt them, cause they were made of invincible, indestructible, forever lasting plastic.
Every week they picked up and every week on the same night they were there again. In their eternal reincarnation the moon was in the sky to see, but unlike them it changed. It was sometimes small, sometimes big and sometimes invisible. They wondered why they were different from the moon, why they weren't able to undergo such an amazing cycle. Many wise plastics were challenged by this question and one of them, one night, silently rolled up to the highest hill of town. Once it was closest to moon it had ever been, it talked to her with admiration and a profound despair: "moon, one of the things I love about you, which I hope we could have too, is the harmony with which you change your mood. You transform your shape, your colors and your shadows - how desperate we must look, forever plastics in plastic enclosed". The moon replied with silver whispers :"The truth is: you shouldn't be here - so immutable, resistant and by change untouched. If you want to be free and once again join the natural cycle of life, tomorrow at midnight start unwrapping your self and liberate from the waste that litters your soul. Let it fill the streets, the hills the mountains, the seas. Humans must see what they have done and how little time it remains." The philosopher wasn't at ease. The message was cryptic but the stake was so high it decided to try and convince all the garbage bags of the city to follow the instructions of the moon. It was easy to convince them, no words were spoken, it was all a matter of sights.
So the coming week, the plastic bags appeared again on time on Friday night, according to their eternal reincarnation, but instead of starting the usual rolling down the hills, they started to open the knot who kept their body together, as the philosopher had said, to free their souls. It was about time and the whole city, the hills, the countryside were full of plastics. The pavements were no more there to see. The plastic bags were empty, liberated.
When the humans woke up that day, they were shocked. People screamed and insulted each other: how was it possible to drive a car, if the roads were drowning in plastics? Neighbors blamed on each others' waste production. Conflict was about to escalate and it would have, if it didn't occur to the people to stop and think, in an inward reflection typical of teeth brushing after breakfast. Each one looked at herself, himself in the mirror only to realize that she or he was the ultimate source of all that waste. Designers, managers, entrepreneurs felt even a stronger responsibility because it was them who had put all that plastic in use at first. With a new incredible sense of consciousness, humans became aware of what they had caused and immediately acted to eliminate plastic consumption, clean mountains, seas and the cities from the ultimate burden of an infinite plastic reincarnation. It was not only the plastic bags' souls the moon had intended to liberate, it was the humans' soul as well.
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