I’d like to thank all the folks who you see daily, cleaning up our communities. The volunteers who gather to clean up our beaches, those who truly make an effort to recycle, you do make a difference.
What has Earth Day become? It has become a podium for the rich and Hollywood elite to tell the populace how to eat, walk, and talk, using the environment as their excuse to get more camera time like a well-oiled politician.
The Camerons, Bonos, Stings, Madonnas, and the Al Gores of this world preach how we should live. Yet how many resources do these jet-setters use to maintain their pious lives, while expelling CO2 emissions that would represent several families and in some cases entire communities?
They have their multitude of zombies who drool at their every word, and the list of rich joining the CO2 high club continues to grow as the zombies gather to worship at the altar of Hollywood.
And in this world of everything instantaneous, people will accept whatever is easiest to believe in their lives. If it’s on the internet it must be so; if some Hollywood star says so, it must be true. And if the packaging states eco that or eco this, it must be so, mustn’t it?
An example of this was Nestle’s advertising a few years back of its ECO-shape bottle, made with 15 per cent less plastic, which the zombies bought into. The advertisement concluded with we can make a difference.
If you want to make a difference, don’t purchase water in a plastic bottle. Use a stainless steel container; as an added bonus you won’t have to wonder whether the plastic eco bottle will have effects on your brain, behaviour, prostate gland, or whether the toxicity will harm fetuses, infants or children.
Of course, the plastic industry will tell you their product has safe levels of all the toxins according to code. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 93% of North Americans have BPA in their urine.
If you’re not concerned about your health, what about the oceans? Between Hawaii and the west coast, floating plastic islands outweigh plankton — the basis of the ocean food chain — six to one.
Oh, and another little tidbit: plastic consumes 10% of our oil consumption.
We’re trying to be better citizens of mother earth, and I guess that should count for something, but in reality we are worse than our 1950 counterparts in our earth friendliness.
Our appetite for material things has become much like debt in many of our lives — out of control. In the 1950s the average home was 954 square feet with a family of 5. Garbage was placed in paper bags, laundry was dried on a clothesline, most families only had one car.
Today the average size of a home is 2,300 square feet with a family of three. Garbage is placed in plastic bags, driers are used, and most families have two or more vehicles in their driveways. These are only a few of the examples.
Sadly, the new age of entitlement only sets a trend that bodes ill for earth’s future. Respect and responsibility are becoming long lost towards the planet that weans us.
Locally, we see the garbage dumps of appliances, household goods, leaky oil containers and tanks.
Thankfully there is an army of citizens who value our backyard, and continue to keep it clean. For them, there is no Earth Day, but earth year.
Leave Earth Day for the Hollywood rich who look through rose-tinted glasses, preaching from their hypocritical podiums.
For those of you who dump wherever and can’t seem to locate the transfer stations or Seven Mile Landfill, just contact your local municipal hall and I’m sure they’ll tell you where to go.