I sat staring at the single use plastic cup in which my iced tea was served and made a mental note to boycott such cafes or coffee shops that used these problematic and polluting implements. People were busy making money. I have nothing against the food business but realize how appalling the ubiquitous use of single use plastics has become. This planet has reached saturation point of plastics, even reusable, recyclable plastics.
Environmental champions continue to raise their voices in warning, pleading, frustration and anger against the on-going persistent plastics pollution of this planet. Their voices seem to fall into a void where even echos are muted. We have failed to educate the larger population or even convince the literate that we’re driving ourselves into the ground. Courting death, disease, famine and overall disaster. There is no recovery or repair from the damage done for hundreds, may be thousands of years to come.
The plastics problem screams at us everywhere we go. It is an eye sore, a contaminant, a pollutant that will plague this earth for centuries into the future. The brain-child of the planet’s greatest inventors. In our convenience crazed world, that leaves no time to think or wake up to the consequences of our actions, we rush along with the rat race accepting this ‘plastics plague’ as one of the ‘normal’ fall outs of modern life. What can we do? We shrug as we drop each single use disposable plastic item into bins or anywhere we please. Small matter, forget about it.
Animals choke, fish die, we remain blind and deaf to the looming catastrophe of food shortages, water pollution, food contamination, increasing epidemics of new diseases, resistant old diseases; in short the cries of a dying planet. Climate change is not the major cause of death and disaster, human apathy, greed and willful blindness to the truth are the deep rooted causes of misery now. War rages all over the globe, whole populations are on the move, attempting to save their children for a better future.
Yet, we in our insular world, unaffected, unconvinced get on with our lives, blind to the links between our everyday actions and their impacts on the larger world beyond our immediate vicinity….
The conflict within myself is not, whether I should support, dismiss or ignore the current furor over the plastics pollution issue, but the dilemma I find myself in. I feel forced into contributing to this disaster by the ‘big players’. Big retail business chains, manufacturers, suppliers, governments who can, but do little or nothing to save this planet from this suffocating, growing, polyurethane, synthetic catastrophe threatening to engulf us soon!
We need to decide if we really want this planet to survive and if we honestly care about our children and grand children – the human race. We could take individual actions by changing our own life-styles, initiating our personal protests and boycotts of things we personally don’t agree with. Let’s take control of our own lives and stop blaming others wholly for the disasters we contribute to. Be aware of yourself, no one is perfect…
Winking at Life 