Guilty Crutch
Sohee Pyo, 2019, DBA23A An Object's Biography
We live a world surrounded by countless products. However, we barely worry about the life of the objects. I used crutches twice in my lifetime, but the crutches I knew were just sticks I relied on for a short period of time. While discovering, researching and exploring my object, a crutch that I found in the second-hand store, I tried to think about past and future of my object.
I was born in a factory in China. The handle is made of polyamide (PA6) also known as nylon, the
body is made of aluminum, and the bottom tip is made of natural rubber. All three of us grew up in different environments. The handle said he was a fish swimming freely in the water a few billion years ago. After he died, he had been buried in the ground for a long time. One day, workers delivered him to the plastic factory. The hometown of the aluminum body is bauxite mine. He said that his hometown changed so much.
Insoluble components of the bauxite are removed by digesting the ore with very hot caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) in the Bayer process. A waste by product of the Bayer process for producing al oxide from the bauxite ore, red mud contains toxic heavy metals and its high alkalinity makes it extremely corrosive and damaging to soil and life forms, presenting a massive problem for disposal.[1] (Stanford, 2016)
On the other hand, the bottom tip was originally a rubber tree. The tip also agreed with the aluminium. The tip was originally a rubber tree. Many trees and animals hated rubber trees. The tip admitted that rubber trees changed a forest a lot.
The forest was devastated while the rubber business gave economic wealth in Xishuangbanna, which is also known as ‘Chinese Amazon’. As the rubber plantation increases, the rubber tree for the past half century exceeded 20% of the total forest of Xishuangbanna, over 500 species of plants extinct. Animal extinction is even worse. Over the past half century, more than 80% of mammals have disappeared from Xishuangbanna. In China, the wild elephants and tigers only inhabited in the West Xishuangbanna and no longer exist. [2] (Qiu, 2009)
I reborn as crutch in an Ossenberg GmbH factory located in D- 48432 Rheine in Germany. I was satisfied to be born a crutch because I wanted to be something that can help others. There were so many people who were sick where I had lived before. I feel guilty because I cannot stop but thinking they were sick because of me. I prayed to be an object that can help someone. The factory that I reborn was so different from where I had been before. I thought human does not value other lives. Didn’t they ignore others’ illness? Surprisingly in the factory they cared about even the slightest things that would hurt humans and make people uncomfortable. My appearance, material, strength and etc. They even tested me a lot. Why does human care about other human being so much like this while they easily make another species being sick and do not care about it? I could not understand.
According to Kalle Klockars who worked at the medical product industry, a medical product should pass lots of regulations and tests to be produced.
Leverantör: Sanicare Hjälpmedel AB
Armbagskrycka klassiker S 76-96cm
Art Nr. 220DKsw
I was named Armbagskrycka klassiker S 220DKsw Black. But no one called the name. If no one calls my name, why did they put this name tag on me? Then…..who am I?
1. A long stick with a crosspiece at the top, used as a support under the armpit by a lame person.
1.1 [in singular] A thing used for support or reassurance.
‘they use the Internet as a crutch for their loneliness’
2. The crotch of the body or a garment.
I was moved to Sweden whose environment was more similar to German, not my hometown. In Sweden, I always am with my partner. I can let them walk and many people lean on my ability. However, I was not the only one. I could see many other crutches, too. The most common one was the small rectangular one. Human mostly uses it as a crutch to avoid loneliness. My partner often had an affair with it. The partner who was holding my hand wherever we went, let go of my hand and touched that, and he often put it on his cheek. Flirting fox…! However, not only I but also that object knew that this moment would not last forever. I walked with a new partner when the legs of old partners recovered, and they have enough strength to walk without me.
The report, A decade of Digital Dependency, says 40 percent of adults look at their phone within five minutes of waking up, rising to 65 percent of those aged under 35. The younger generation is the most addicted. Those aged 15 to 24 on average spend four hours a day on the phone compared with 2 hours 49 minutes for all adults. The young also check their phones every 8.6 minutes, more frequently than any other age group.[4] (Ofcum, 2018)
And one estimate suggests that Americans touch their mobile devices more than 2,600 times a day on average. Twenge noticed a troubling correlation between when smartphones became popular and when rates of mental health problems among teens and young adults began skyrocketing.[5] (Peeples, 2018)
One day the other crutch I met at the hospital said that he came from another country, where many crutches were used and just dumped. He told me that I could meet lots of partners because Sweden has a great borrow & lending system. I doubted my ear.
"Maybe they were broken. If it were not, why would they have been thrown away?”
"No, most of them were fine like you but rushed to the garbage truck."
It was shocking. Why? Even though I am so good like this? I always think I will meet new partners over and over again like nowadays, but it was not true.
I was brought to China for recycling. Aluminum, main material of my body is treated as a highly recyclable material. Deep inside my mind, I was quite proud of it.
By 2016, half the world’s plastic scrap intended for recycling was traded internationally. China has imported 45 percent of the world’s total waste since 1992. [6] (Parker, 2018)
However, after China refused to import garbage, we had no choice but to be transferred to another place. And for the first time, I finally found out what human and I have in common. Wants to reduce feelings of guilt. Humans are recycling garbage so that they feel less guilty and think that recycling is a proper solution. However, what is the truth?
After China regulated the import of waste in 2018, all the countries over the world lighted a red light. With China’s door to plastic waste effectively closed, hundreds of small-operation Chinese plastics recyclers relocated to other Southeast Asian countries. They set up new factories, often illegally. They began buying imported plastic trash for reprocessing. In the first half of the year, imports of plastic trash increased by 56 percent in Indonesia, doubled in Vietnam, and rose in Thailand by 1,370 percent.[7] (Hook & Reed, 2018)
We were decided to load to Southeast Asia because China refused to take us. However, it was odd. We moved to South Korea, not South East Asia. So we had to wait on and on.
More than 1,000 tons of garbage shipped to the Philippines falsely as "recyclable materials" last year have been returned to Korea. It is part of 6,300 tons of garbage a Korean company exported to a Philippines company in July and October. According to Korean media reports, the two companies made the deal to reduce the disposal cost, which would be less than a third of the Korean cost in the Philippines. However, Philippines officials and environmentalists later found that many of the materials were not recyclable.[8] (Min-ho, 2019)
After the Korean government's move, environmentalists in the Philippines are now stepping up pressure on the Canadian government to take responsibility for its own garbage there. Much of the world’s unrecyclable plastics are flocking to Southeast Asia after China banned the import of plastic waste. Dumping plastic waste in Southeast Asia, where regulations are relatively lax, is cheaper than processing it here.[9] (Ock, 2019)
After a long time passes, still I was there. I flow into the ocean. Barnacles gather around me and stick to me. I became a house for barnacles and got a chance to get rid of my guilt. Finally, I became a crutch for nature. Shall I be pleased? Or shall I feel sad that nature now needs a crutch.
[1] Stanford, K. (2016, 11 15). Red mud - addressing the problem. Retrieved 11 2016, from Aluminium Insider: https://aluminiuminsider.com/red-mud-addressing-the-problem/
[2] Qiu, J. (2009). Where rubber meets a garden. Nature, 246-247.
[3] Oxford Dictionary. (n.d.). Crutch. Retrieved from Oxford Living Dictionaries: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/crutch
[4] Ofcum. (2018). A decade of Digital Dependency. Ofcum. England: Ofcum.
[5] Peeples, L. (2018, 12 14). Can't put down the phone? How smartphones are changing our brains — and lives. (MACH) Retrieved from NBCNEWS: https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/surprising-ways-smartphones-affect-our-brains-our-lives-ncna947566
[6] Parker, L. (2018, 11 16). China's ban on trash imports shifts waste crisis to Southeast Asia. Retrieved from National Geography: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/china-ban-plastic-trash-imports-shifts-waste-crisis-southeast-asia-malaysia/
[7] Hook, L., & Reed, J. (2018, 10 25). Why the world’s recycling system stopped working. Retrieved from Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/360e2524-d71a-11e8-a854-33d6f82e62f8
[8] Min-ho, J. (2019, 2 23). Returned to sender: 1,200 tons of Korean garbage back from Philippines. Retrieved from The Korean Times: http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=263254
[9] Ock, H. (2019, 1 3). S. Korea to take back garbage from Philippines. Retrieved from The Korea Herald: http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190103000716
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