5/21/10

5/21 Trashing our country!! :(

Imagine this...
You give me a gift. It's the most beautiful, unique, wondrous gift I've ever received. It's full of life, mystery and is inspiring at every glance. Imagine I take that gift and pretend to love it. I take all of it's resources and use them as I wish (never giving back as much as I take, of course) and then I proceed to simply take a giant crap on it!! Too graphic? Nope, just a perfect depiction of what we're doing to our planet. ...the pictures below are graphic, but necessary.
Seriously guys. I know I don't need to say much when it comes to this issue. We all know what's going on, we know what we can do to help reverse the problem, we know what we are doing that is contributing to the problem...yet our planet looks like this. Plastic is poison when consumed. The fish, birds and other creatures that eat it are then, accordingly, poison. So, knowing that fish is one of our healthiest food resources, why do we want to poison them. Or any other creature, edible or not!?!

Unbelievable. I cannot believe that the largest of the 5 HUGE trash swirls in our ocean is TWICE the size of Texas and deeper than you want to know!!!!! What's in them? Mostly plastic bottles and plastic bags. Pathetic.



Why?! Why are we dumping barges full of trash in the ocean?? That's right folks, the swirls are not there because of littering alone. We take barges full of trash and dump them in the ocean as if we have a giant flush handle that can be pulled.


Fact is, we don't. It can't be flushed away, it's only going to grow larger and more repulsive by the day. Killing animals and killing us in turn. Do you know how many cancers can be linked to the consumption of plastic? Educate yourself!
Use re-usable bags when you shop, so you don't have to use plastic ones. Plastic bags are actually illegal in a lot of countries and in others they charge you to use them. Why aren't we following the example? Are we 'eco-friendly' only when it's hip?...like 'green' baby clothes and fashionable 'green' home products?? I think we can do better.
RECYCLE!!! Do not throw anything away that can 1)be recycled through your city's recycling program or 2)that somebody else could get use out of. The picture above is a set of bins that a neighbor of mine had out with the trash cans (along with an un-damaged drum set and several other perfectly usable items) to be picked up, toted away to the dump and either buried or dumped in the ocean. Should I be ashamed that I saw it's potential and nabbed it, cleaned it up and used it myself? NO WAY!!! I would be far more ashamed to just carelessly throw it out, not considering for a minute where it will go or what/who it will affect once it left my curb.
Why are we so irresponsible? I mean, why are there thousands of gallons of oil spilling into the ocean?




Why are there practically new continents made from trash?! I don't know, but it makes me sad for my child and the generations to come. We've selfishly screwed the people we're supposed to be looking out for out of a healthy, happy planet to live on.

1 comment:

  1. I had no idea about the plastic vortex. I knew of dumping but not that size of a plastic vortex. Thanks for educating us.

    ReplyDelete