The film, produced by Jeremy Irons, and commentated by him, swept round the
world showing the most appalling effects of discarded plastics. Seas, becoming
a plastic soup, rivers flowing close to impoverished families, clogged up and
polluting the waters which are the life-blood of these communities.
Sea
mammals are harmed by plastic objects lodging in their bodies and suffer
appalling injuries. One of the most distressing films revealed mountains of
plastic waste which simply builds up and has nowhere to go except into the sea,
in some locations, creating some of the worst polluted eye-sores on one-time
magnificent coastlines. I felt quite helpless, as I watched. I'm so careful to
recycle all, and have very little landfill waste, each week. But still I use
plastic bags, to my shame. I want to give them up totally and think we all need
help to identify alternatives to plastic use in our everyday lives. Since the
film, I've thought seriously about not re-using water bottles and have today
sourced from the Stroud Valleys Project shop, a re-usable plastic bottle which
will not leach harmful pollutants, (as do ordinary plastic bottles after
re-use). I am going to a meeting on 7th October to volunteer with the STOP
(Stroud Opposed to Plastic Bags) 7.30pm at
the town council offices in London Road. It's open
to anyone who wants to help raise awareness of this campaign. I suppose this is
a start, but it looks as if we will to be very vigilant, especially keeping an
eye on politicians who think that incineration will solve all our plastic waste
problems.
The
film showed that incineration can produce harmful dioxin emissions and this
'solution' is just too big a risk to take in the rush to sort out the globe's
waste mountain.
I
have a lot more to learn about the science of alternatives to incineration and
was cheered to learn that there are 'saner, smaller, cheaper alternatives
proposed by the Glosvain campaign (www.glosvain.info).
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