Change can happen quickly – if we make it happen!
By Fleur
@Fleura (32435)
United Kingdom
February 7, 2018 5:46am CST
Plastic waste and litter has been a problem as long as I can remember, and although ‘Knowledge is power’ in this case knowing about the problem doesn’t seem to have helped, in fact it has been getting steadily worse for decades.
Now though it seems that the BBC’s latest series of ‘Blue Planet’ presented by David Attenborough and shown on UK TV has brought the issue of plastic litter, especially in the marine environment, more into the public consciousness. It has demonstrated clearly that when something is thrown away, there is really no such place as ‘away’ and it just turns up somewhere else, causing harm in all sorts of unforeseen ways.
After this there has been far more attention on the subject, and numerous articles in/on various media on the subject of single-use plastic in particular. Plastic straws hit the headlines as a typical example of something plastic that is thrown away almost immediately and is totally unnecessary in the first place.
No sooner had I heard an article about this on the radio, than I went to the supermarket and, lo and behold, they had paper straws for sale! I had never seen them there before, and I couldn’t believe how quickly they had (presumably) responded to the public backlash against single-use plastic straws.
I don’t know if these are truly recyclable (it says they are, but not sure if I believe it) but in our house they are going in the compost bin.
That just seemed to illustrate how incredibly quickly things can change in response to public pressure. People often say ‘What can I do? It’s such a huge problem’ but it grew up one little thing at a time, and I think that just shows that we can improve the situation one little change at a time too, if we only want to enough!
All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2018.
10 people like this
10 responses
@louievill (28849)
• Philippines
7 Feb 18
Plastic bags had already been banned in my city since 2011. Wax coated paper straws came earlier than plastic straws, I remember everybody was using them during the 60s
1 person likes this
@louievill (28849)
• Philippines
7 Feb 18
@Fleura right, plus it does not deteriorate quickly when wet.
1 person likes this
@louievill (28849)
• Philippines
7 Feb 18
@Strawberry18 plastic bags are also banned in your city, our cities are twin cities, we only had a single congressman when we were municipalities, our "no plastic bags" was modeled after yours.
1 person likes this
@WorDazza (15830)
• Manchester, England
7 Feb 18
It's good that the supermarket responded in this way but don't believe for one minute it has anything to do with their eco-credentials. Why stock stuff you're probably no longer going to be able to shift??
I suppose it ultimately shouldn't matter why they have taken the decision but pardon me if I don't congratulate them!!
1 person likes this
@porwest (106348)
• United States
24 Aug
It's a crisis for a crisis to promote a thing, is what I always like to say. The plastic industry needed a boost, so what did they do? They tried to "save the rainforest" by replacing paper bags and things like that. Now they want to go back to paper. Oh, but wait, but now they want to go back to plastic.
We're not saving or conserving anything. We're just making our lives unnecessarily more difficult pretending the world is always in some crisis or another.
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@porwest (106348)
• United States
26 Aug
@Fleura But that's not happening either. The data doesn't back it up, and all the predictions of gloom and doom and famine has never happened. Ever notice the end of the world is always 12 years out? Once that 12 years happens and nothing ever falls apart they just add another 12 years to the time it will happen.
When this "climate change" thing got started they called it "global warming." Why did it change to "climate change?" Because in the 70s it actually got colder. So, then they had to change the narrative and now they say, "More storms and more severe ones and changing weather patterns."
But the funny thing is, when you look at the data, the Earth isn't getting warmer and tornadoes and hurricanes and things like that happen at the same frequency they always have.
The ONLY thing that has changed is the attention the media places on something when it does happen.
That all said, here's the deal. Climate change IS real. BUT, the question is not is it happening or can it happen. It's what causes it, and the answer is, it's not us AND we can't do anything about it. The Earth has been around for hundreds of billions of years. There have been ice ages and tropical periods. There are oceans where there were deserts and deserts where there were oceans.
We can't stop a hurricane, but we think we can adjust the temperature of the Earth 1/10th of a degree. It's ridiculous.
The moon and the sun and the forces those things apply to our planet, our atmosphere, our temperature and everything else has WAY more impact on life here than running our Ford truck all day long on idle.
@crossbones27 (51090)
• Mojave, California
7 Feb 18
I personally hate plastic but get it, still wonder why they never try hemp to take its place. Money or more costly and harder to make, but they never say that and sounds more like they do not try so can say plastic is better.
1 person likes this
