Makes Me Want To Cry Poem by David Whalen

Just a few facts
that should make you want to cry…
Four thousand per cent markup
On each bottle of water you buy

Four per cent of all U.S. energy is consumed
In the making of plastic
So I’m guessin’ that our average person
Doesn’t think the energy crises is drastic

Doesn’t even matter
what you’re putting in it
One hundred forty four thousand
plastic bags are used every minute

At least four billion bottles
purchased in 2010
An amount that’s quite
Impossible to truly comprehend

Twelve per cent of all plastic
Is turned into solid trash
Which we then convert into big smelly piles
And then try to find a place to stash

And speaking of taste there’s
one thing that you oughta’
Know about your spring
and mountain pure bottled water

And that’s one not so surprising fact
That most of your prized mountain,
and your precious spring water
Comes into your bottles from an ordinary tap

At least four hundred million barrels of oil
Used to make plastic bottles and bags in 2010
Look at the bright side, at least we’ve made a lot of Arabs happy…
In Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Iran!

So maybe it’s the shape or maybe the cachet
That works it’s insidious seduction… (but stop and think!)
A hundred watt bulb can burn eleven hours
On the energy wasted on just one bottle’s production

Eighty percent of marine garbage is plastic
Two hundred species at risk from plastic waste
But what’s a few species? Let’s not be drastic!
We certainly wouldn’t want to act in haste.

Three hundred thousand pounds per square kilometer
Floating in the Pacific alone
So we oughta’ start thinking about using the Atlantic
When we start thinking of tossing our old cell phone

So when you buy your next bottled water
There’s one thought I’d like to plant under your nose
It takes only a few seconds to make one plastic bottle
But takes four hundred fifty…years to decompose