Long Lost Bottle

In a bottle distribution facility in the mountainous suburb of Coquitlam, Cuppa woke up for the first time after having been molded into shape and filled with pristine stream water infused with ozone. Looking around him, he noticed there were five other bottles just like him strapped together by a piece of plastic, and even more plastic covered all around them, sealing them from the outside world.

Suddenly they were picked up and deposited into a container or sorts, as more and more packages of bottled water were loaded. With the slamming of the sliding back door, they could hear the engine roaring to life and then they could feel that they were in motion; slowly at first but speeding up gradually.

Several hours later, the truck made an abrupt stop and the door was flung open as the stacks were unloaded into a loading bay behind a grocery store. Cuppa could feel the excitement bubbling inside of him as he was carried with his brothers and sisters from the bay into the store isle where they were shelved amongst the other disposable beverages.

Watching through the clear plastic coating around them, Cuppa watched as customers picked sodas, juices and carbonated drinks, but very few opted for the bottled water. Feeling a sadness that he would never be used, he resigned to the reality that he was less desirable than the other fancier drinks. If only he was a root beer or ginger ale, then people might buy him. But suddenly, a young man picked up their case and loaded them into his shopping cart, making Cuppa brimming with joy. Finally, he would be used and someone will drink his healthy, pristine water inside him.

After being paid for at the checkout, the man took Cuppa from his pack, opened the cap and swigged down the water as if he had been in a year-long drought. Feeling satisfied that his purpose in life was finished, Cuppa hoped to be recycled and reformed back into a new bottle of water, but to his horror, the young man threw him in the waste bin, which infuriated the empty bottle. What hurt the most was that the recycling box was a mere two metres away from the trash can, and it would take a certain degree of uncaringness to throw perfectly recyclable plastics into the garbage.

Lying there amongst the refuse which smelled of rotting and dying things, Cuppa couldn’t believe that his usefulness to society would be cut short so abruptly. He could have been recycled several times over before finally thrown in the trash, but now, he would only live up to his name: single use plastic. As more and more trash began to bury him in the foul-smelling material, he choked and wondered why anyone would fail to recycle their plastics, which was the right thing to do, according to the government.

Looking around, he espied several other drink containers, a few soda cans, a beer bottle and an empty milk jug. They were all condemned to the same fate of being thrown out into a landfill and buried somewhere deep underground, or worse yet, burned to death and incinerated.

Suddenly, a bright flash of light exposed Cuppa, as gloved hands dug in the trash and picked up all the recyclable containers, including Cuppa. They were placed in a clear plastic bag and carried along, by an older gentleman with thin greying hair and a pair of small bifocal glasses.

If the containers could speak, they would be hollering out in joy for they were going to serve their purpose of being reused several times over. They watched as more and more containers were liberated and the plastic bag grew fuller with each addition to the collection.

As the bag reached its capacity, the old man stored the bag behind a hedge and took his cardboard sign to panhandle for money on the street intersection. The sky had started to cloud over and the dark ominous clouds began to spit out rain.

Cuppa watched as the old man was drenched by the seasonal downpour, yet he stood there patiently, waiting for any spare change from the passing motorists.

A couple hours later, the old man retrieved the bag of containers and took off on his bike, riding towards the nearest bottle depot station. Suddenly, an SUV swerved to the right bicycle lane and smashed into the bottle collector. Dozens of bottles and cans exploded from the bags and flew into the street as cars came to a screeching halt to avoid hitting the SUV or the cyclist.

Cuppa was crushed by the SUV, flattened to a sixth of his volume and his cap had blown off due to the pressure. He looked over at the bottle collector and felt a sense of grief as the old man lay motionless on the side of the street. Soon the blaring sirens of the emergency vehicles could be heard, and paramedics took away the old man as police tried to piece together what caused the crash. The wrangled bike was a testament to the force of the impact, and that it was not just a simple accidental bump.

As the downpour increased, the road began to pool with water, and being plastic, Cuppa was set afloat and drifted towards the sewer drains. Crying out for help, he was caught by the metal grills for a second before tipping over and falling into the city’s storm drain network, floating towards the sanitation plant in Annacis Island. The dark dreary pipes echoed with the sound of dripping and floating water, and Cuppa didn’t know what was worse, being trapped in a trash can or being helplessly floating to nowhere in pitch black darkness.

As he reached the sanitation facility, he was initially caught in a pretreatment filter that separated the solids from the sewer water, and Cuppa was scrapped into a container along with other trash-like items.

Once again, Cuppa was headed towards a landfill, and this time there would be no bottle collector to save him from certain doom. If he ended up in the city’s dumping site, there would be no going back and he would be condemned to a lifetime of isolation before he would be decomposed back to natural materials.

The compressed bottle was loaded onto a dump truck with heaps of other garbage and was immediately sent to the nearest landfill where he fell top over bottom tumbling into the mountains of trash and causing a cacophony of birds to move after being disturbed.

After countless days turned into countless weeks and months, Cuppa lost all hope in being recycled and lay there in the elements, at the mercy of the weather which pounded him with torrents of rain, snow, slush and even hail in the winter. In the summer, scorching heat partially melted his plastic coatings, releasing toxic fumes into the air.

The words printed on his label by now had faded away, erasing his identity as to where he was from and when he was made. All he had was his memories to remind himself of who he was before being thrown out as trash.

Seagulls, searched indiscriminately for any scraps of food, opting to tear open garbage bags full of kitchen waste. Cuppa had been pecked several times by birds, but being inedible, many just ignored him as a piece of trash among millions.

Everyday, he would wake up to see garbage trucks dumping their waste, piling heaps and heaps of trash upon one another. Thankfully Cuppa wasn’t buried by the incoming new trash but had a clear view of the sky and surroundings from his position.

Just a couple hundred more years till I decompose. Great. At least I can do some birdwatching from here…crap! thought Cuppa as a bird overhead defecated on him.

This is where dignity goes to die…he thought, laying there with bird poop splatted all over his body.

Several years later there was nothing new in the Sun, and Cuppa wasn’t the least bit surprised when more dump trucks came to his landfill. Uncharacteristically though was that these trucks were empty, and when they parked on the fringes of the landfill, the workers began shoveling trash into the trucks. Wondering why the humans would start taking trash instead of adding to the landfill, he could only think of two things: either they had figured out a way to recycle all manners of trash and plastics, or they were headed to the incineration plant. Desperately hoping that the latter option would not be true, Cuppa formed beads of sweat inside his bottle and nervously watched as load after load of trucks came and went, taking the trash with them. Slowly but steadily, the mounds of trash began to diminish, slightly at first, but gradually getting smaller day after day. Soon, a miracle happened. Deemed impossible to see the bare ground underneath all the garbage, the trucks had removed sufficient trash so that the bare earth could be seen. Although soaked with all sorts of hazardous liquids and solvents, it was a step in the right direction in returning nature to what it was.

Then, it was Cuppa’s turn. Picked up by a worker’s shovel, he was deposited onto a truck and once full, was transported to some place unknown to the bottle. Hoping he would not be ending his journey in an incineration plant, he was surprisingly delighted to see a large sorting facility where workers were busy separating all sorts of trash for recycling and safe disposal. Relief surged through Cuppa’s mind as he saw plastic bags, toothbrushes and cups being sorted into bins full of other plastics just like himself. Being picked up by a handler, he nearly jumped with joy and nuzzled snuggly in the bin surrounded by his fellow plastic friends.

First they all had to be cleaned of their contents, whether that be food, liquids or chemicals. Then they were shredded into tiny flakes and melted into pebbles which would be used to mould other plastic containers. After being recast into a new shape, Cuppa woke up once again and this time as a laundry detergent container. Filled to the brim with laundry soap, he was sealed and packaged for delivery, starting his journey all over again. He hoped that this time, it would only take weeks to be recycled, rather than the grueling long decade he waited to be recycled as a water bottle. Only time would tell if his aspirations would come true.

The End