Thursday 2 October 2014

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #312 Clean Up Land Waste

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #312 Clean Up Land Waste


This planet of ours has ‘land’ and it has ‘water’ and we’ve managed to pollute both extremely well. It’s time to reverse our damaging ways and begin the massive cleanup. It’s time to realise that when we throw something ‘away’ it doesn’t simply vanish into thin air. It doesn’t disappear. ‘Away’ is an actual place, in fact thousands of places around the world called ‘landfill’. Search the Internet for images of landfill and see how repulsive they are. Everywhere you look you can see waste – it’s the rubbish in the streets, plastic bags stuck up in trees, paper blowing around the streets, rubbish dumped in public garden spaces or on roadsides. See what waste looks like in real life, then decide it’s time to do something about it.
Participate in cleanup days – We have ‘Clean Up Australia Day’ in my country, so you check out what’s in your country. Keep your own neighbourhood tidy – if you see rubbish on the ground, pick it up and prevent it from going into waterways. Be aware of what is happening in your vicinity – is their any local industry that is creating massive waste and not dealing with it appropriately? Create an action group that encourages industry to be responsible. Find ways to reduce your own waste/rubbish/trash (whatever you call it) and be proactive in cleaning up after yourself and encouraging others to do the same.
On a larger scale, we need to do something about the landfill we’ve already created. Perhaps instead of spending money working out how to put people on Mars we should concentrate our scientific knowledge on cleaning up our own back yard – this planet we call Earth, which is already our home. We need to find ways of reusing that which we have tossed away as useless, and make it useful. Maybe it could be used to generate energy, or maybe more of it can be recycled if we put our minds to it (and our wallets). Once we concentrate our efforts, I’m sure we’ll find good answers to our problems.

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