No, I am not suggesting that the world’s wealthiest person should be punished for his earthly sins by relegating him to driving a trash truck. I prefer to think his ultimate fate will be spending eternity in Dante’s Fourth Circle of Hell (“Greed”).

But my mind works in circuitous ways that are often a mystery even to me, so please stay with me here as I explain.

It all started with trash bags — those small, four-gallon ones that are produced in rolls, which I, like many people, use to line the waste baskets in my bathroom and den. For years, I have been buying the Glad brand because they are less expensive than Hefty. I mean, they’re just for trash, so why pay extra . . . right?

Well, last week the store was out of the Glad variety, so I went ahead and grabbed the Hefty ones — the per-box price was about the same, but there were fewer bags in the box. Still, it wasn’t enough of a difference to break the budget, so no big deal.

But it turned out that there was a good reason for the additional cost: the Hefty bags are simply better. (Sorry, Glad.) They’re way more substantial, better designed and constructed . . . and you don’t have to tear each bag off of a continuous roll like the Glad bags, which sometimes rip in the process. Also, Hefty’s . . . you know . . . heft would make them less likely to leak or to be punctured by a corner of a discarded container as the cheaper ones often do.

Well, I was delighted with my find of a better product. But yesterday morning, as I was emptying the trash and putting new Hefty bags into the waste baskets, it occurred to me that my marvelous discovery — precisely because of their more substantial quality — might be gunking up our planet even more than it already is gunked up.

And that led me to thoughts of plastic in general, and how much of it we discard on a daily basis.

There is no question that the invention of the first fully synthetic plastic in 1907 was one of the most significant events of the modern industrial age. In one form or another, it is used in everything from toothpaste tubes to spaceship components. I’m sure the crew of Artemis II would agree that their trip around the moon would not have been possible without plastic.

But for daily use, so much of the plastic we use is disposable. Think about those toothpaste tubes — not to mention food containers, shower caps, soda bottles, bags from the grocery store, and the plastic utensils you’ll be buying for your 4th of July picnic. And it all has to end up somewhere. Most of it is not biodegradable, and while a good portion of it may be recyclable, how many of us — be honest now — how many of us are as diligent about that as we should be?

And this is where Elon Musk comes in. It was at that point in my musings that Artemis II popped back into my mind, which took me directly to the whole human obsession with space and . . . drumroll, please . . .

Elon Musk’s ambition to colonize Mars.

Now, I have made fun of this idea in the past, painting it as some sort of little kid’s Flash-Gordon/Star-Wars fantasy. And I still think it will be many generations — if ever — before humans actually residing on another planet might become a realistic concept.

But what if Musk really wanted to do something good for our own planet? And what if he could get us close enough to our nearest planetary neighbor to make a drop? Once we had the technology to reach and orbit Mars, we could just load up a fleet of his ships with trash, hover over the Red Planet, open the hatches, and bombs away! And Elon Musk — or by then, one of his many descendants — could take all the credit for cleaning up Earth instead of destroying it and having to start over elsewhere.

And he could earn another few billion dollars in the process.

Yes, it would be expensive; but so is declaring war on Iran. Where would you rather see our tax dollars go? We wouldn’t be hurting anyone, as there are no “anyones” there to hurt. And we would be saving our own atmosphere for our future generations.

It may sound crazy now. But the North Koreans are already pelting South Korea with trash-filled balloons. Why not take it to the next level?

By the way, if you think my waking ideas are outlandish, you should hear some of my nighttime dreams.

Or maybe not.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/14/26