Too Many Plastics

 (Revision 4 6/20/23)
Lyrics copyright Kristoffer Andrew Ross, May 31, 2023, written for Beyond Plastics, Bennington VT. 
Melody derived from “The Faucets Are Dripping,” Malvina Reynolds, 1959, which itself shares a tune with “Los Gatos Plane Crash”, Woody Guthrie and Martin Hoffman, 1948-58.

CHORUS
There’s P-F-O-A and there’s P-F-A-S,
Poly-Vynil Chloride and sheet plexiglass, 
Poly-Ethylene, Poly-Styrene, and P-E-T-E,
There’s too many plastics go into the sea.

Well deep are the wells that the oil is pumped up, 
And drummed up and plumbed up and shipped out by rail, 
From Texas or Russia, or up in Alberta,
The route that it takes is a sorrowful tale,
 
For some oil’s refined, toxic gases combined,
With some left as crude and it flows right on by,
It fills up some tankers, enriches some bankers, 
And reaches our shores in the sweet by and by,

CHORUS For there’s …

And the diesel and gas are both piped into vats,
Beneath unnatural stuff that they call natural gas,
In engines they’re burned, into CO2 turned,
Its usefulness done it floats up to the sky

The sun’s rays will heat up that carbon dioxide
And the more CO2 the more temperatures rise,
But let’s not forget, that twenty percent,
Of the oil down here that they polymerize,

CHORUS For there’s….

Now there’s plastic in rivers, there’s plastic on land,
And down at the beach microplastics for sand,
Will we still be here when the junk disappears? 
For before it decays it takes thousands of years.

And out in the Pacific, near islands and reefs,
Nearly two trillion pieces of plastic debris,
Are floating in motion, across the wide ocean,
There’s too many poisons go into the sea