Of Potsherds and Plastic Frozen Food Trays -- a Rant

Will somebody PLEASE invent a biodegradable microwaveable frozen food tray that does not contain petrochemicals! One made of sugar or starch that you could run down the sink disposal when you're done with it, if you don't mind. . . These stupid plastic frozen food trays we use now are piling up in our landfills. In a thousand years, they will be littering the landscape like potsherds in Babylon!

One wonders what future archaeologists will make of them. I can see it now: The scholarly papers discussing the "Bird's Eye" culture and the "Green Giant" people and how the two co-mingled across the landscape, and the charactaristic "blackware" of the "Stouffer" people that was found over a surprisingly large geographical area. And how wave after wave of these plastic pan people gradually supplanted the earlier metal cylinder culture. And theories will be propounded about what became of the glass vessel people who produced glassware in such a myriad of shapes and colors. . .

You may think this archaeological scenerio is somewhat far-fetched, and I agree with you. At the rate we're going, any archeology that is conducted on this planet a thousand years from now will be very far-fetched. It will be conducted in our absence by archeologists from another star system, and those future archaeologists will return from their dig sites to their camp of flying saucers. And they will sit around their solar powered campfire sipping their postprandial beverage of choice, mulling over the day's trove of artifacts, and wonder about the culture that produced them -- who they were and what they were thinking. I've been wondering the same thing myself for years.