Larry Speight brings us his monthly column –
A report issued on the 8 June, which is the UN declared World Ocean Day, states that an estimated 52 million tonnes of plastics enter the ocean every year. I challenge you to imagine the scale of this amount. What does 52 million tons of any substance look like? The truth is the amount is so vast we have no readily available reference points.
This, sad to say, is not the total sum of our waste. It is but the measure of one of the materials we use and discard almost without thought in the course of our day. We have a plastic wrapping in our hands one moment and if in a public space are likely let it fall at our feet or if in a moving vehicle throw it out the window. If you don’t believe this look around you. On seashores, river embankments, in woodlands, on the verge of country roads and on city pavements you will find discarded plastic along with other items such as cigarette butts and vapes. They are found on the top of mountains and at places that were traditionally considered sacred such as holy wells and wishing trees.
Throwing away plastic wrappings, bags, bottles and containers of every kind is for many as unconscious as the stream of unregistered thoughts involved in our physical dexterity such as walking or reaching for something. An exception is when we have suffered an injury and every move has to be consciously planned in order to minimise the pain.
Throwing away things we no longer want is an integral part of many a person’s mindset, something the archaeological evidence shows we having being doing since our species first evolved. For most of this time this was not an ecological or social problem as what we used was organic and decomposed. However, with the advent of the industrial age and the development of synthetic materials how to dispose of things in a way that causes the least harm is a major problem.
Are readers aware that in both Northern and Southern Ireland most landfill sites have reached full capacity and the waste is transported by lorries to mainland Britain and Europe to feed incinerators that generate electricity. This embeds waste management across our island in the global fossil fuel economy and every penny rise in the cost of liquid fuels means that Councils have less money to spend on meeting other public needs. This is a millstone around our necks pulling us ever deeper into the mire of economic and ecological dysfunction.
The challenge of disposing what we don’t want, which are often perfectly usable goods, is an educational and legislative one involving the chicken and egg scenario. Legislation is needed at all levels of government, including at the international level, to ensure that manufactured goods can be repaired rather junked for the reason that the items can’t be repaired and if they can it is more expensive to repair them than buy a new one. This applies to things as transparently simple and inexpensive as a pair of flip-flops as it does to items as sophisticated and expensive as mobile phones. Long passed are the days when you could leave electric devices such as a radio, television and tape recorder into a shop to be repaired.
Legislation is also needed to change the materials in which things are contained and carried. When I travelled in India in the 1990s train passengers were served tea in clay cups which were, as our ancestors would have done, thrown away after the liquid was drank. Today it is plastic cups that are thrown away. Food items were served in paper cones, on palm leaves, in newspaper or pages torn out of an old school text book.
The conglomerates that dominate the global economy should be compelled by internationally enforceable legislation to produce packaging that when disposed of will decompose and can be used as compost on gardens and fields.
Some progress has been made in producing carrier bags that decompose but the research shows that outside of laboratory conditions the decomposition takes more than a human life-span. The majority of the clothes that likely adorn your body at this very moment will exist somewhere on the planet long after your flesh and bones have been digested by the guts of our planet. Your legacy won’t be engraved on a block of polished marble but be all the things you purchased during the course of your life which, as in a horror film, never die.
Your body is wearing your ghost.
Your immortality is your life-long accumulation of all the inorganic things you have ever owned and fossil fuels you have ever used or used for your benefit. It is said that all of our good and harmful deeds are recorded in a ledger overseen by God and that our immortal fate will be determined by what is the ledger, in other words by our own deeds. What will be the magnitude of the harm done to nonhuman beings and our fellow humans, including the generations yet to be born, when the record of your deeds is set before you so that you know you have chosen your own type of eternity?
Perhaps, as in court rooms today, we might plead ignorance as a mitigating circumstance, except that in law ignorance is no excuse. This brings us to the chicken and egg scenario. In order to achieve effective waste management legislation we need to lobby our legislative bodies to pass the legislation. Start with your elected political representatives. We also need to ensure that the conglomerates fulfill their ecological responsibilities and educate ourselves about the ecological niche we occupy and the harm we do as well as the good we can do.
The Earth is being suffocated by the things we dispose of which means we are self-harming and this should stop. The first step towards restoring our collective health can be taken today. No excuses.