Sunday, August 10, 2008

Made From Corn

I was just about to toss this plastic cup last night when I decided to read what was written on it. I would love to tour the plant that makes corn into plastic cups. I don't know if you can read the back but it says "fully compostable." Interestingly enough, I just read an article in "The Sun" magazine today about a 90 year old Nicaraguan woman who made corn tortillas from 4am to midnight for the Sandinistas-to give them energy to fight the Contras; Esperanza says "corn is the strength that we subsist on...a person cannot work, cannot think, cannot exist without our corn." This stirs up all kinds of thoughts, like how much Reagan was hated on my college campus during the Nicaraguan conflict, heated talk over beer & cigarettes about the SNLF, and the idea of taking a raw material & turning it into something unexpected. It's interesting that this cup looks exactly like plastic, like did they have to take the "cornness" out of it so it wouldn't freak people out (because it's more reassuring to drink out of petroleum by-products), or does processed corn look like plastic anyway. Did this cup use 20 times the resources to make as a plastic one? Or, even more intriguing, did some Banksy influenced guerilla artist just print this on there, making an urban hipster hoax, to give people like me something to blog about...

3 comments:

They say it's a cold world said...

Heyeee Marsha
Thanks for the checkin on my blog! It is all about the book at the moment. I feel like pimp and whore all rolled into one. Will's new blog is sick. He must spend huge winterover hours on it. What's the deal? Are you going icewards soon? Or hooking up with him when he gets off? And when is that? Leave me another message with some info, dahling! PS at this point practically the whole neighborhood is rocking Hagglund bumper stickers. Well, three of us, at least.

Anonymous said...

Marsha dearest,

You should read Michael Pollan's "Omnivore's Dilemma" for the answers to all your questions, you won't have to read even more than the 1st third of the book to find out how it is done and how scary is the world of corn now. I strongly recommend it.

Genevieve

Akyramoto said...

I tried composting one of these. It didn't do much for 4 or 5 months. Maybe I need to bury it more LOL