Cliff Hatton
Well-known member
Shortly after starting this, I leant back in my chair and gasped a sigh of exasperation: I was constructing a rant, wasn’t I? Surely, on the very serious subject of global plastic pollution I should be writing something more than just a lengthy moan about the state of our seas and rivers. But how? What do I know about plastic degradation, its chemical make-up, its effects on the environment and its inhabitants? I sat pondering this and even considered researching the subject but, then, I thought, no! A rant it’ll be! Why not? For decades the world’s governments and its peoples have been warned time and again by environmentalists, conservationists, anglers, bird-watchers, botanists and many, many others, about our planet’s undignified fate if we fail to take waste management seriously.
I count myself amongst those ‘…many, many others…’ Over 20 years ago I was writing articles for magazines and sending letters to newspapers highlighting the nightmare of plastics-production; I asked readers to imagine the world’s plastics manufacturers churning-out hundreds of thousands of plastic bottles and food containers every minute and to ignore their brief stay in cupboards and under kitchen sinks…just imagine, I asked, those products being for immediate disposal: how could we possibly keep up? How could we dig a hole fast enough and big enough to accommodate such volume? And if we were to opt for recycling, just how many recycling plants would be needed to make good the disposal of so much material?
Zooming-in Google Earth style to the roads of individual countries – let’s take Great Britain as an example – how can it be that successive ‘Environment Ministers’, MPs, Councillors and a small army of highly influential, well-paid civil servants haven’t noticed, apparently, the sheer ubiquity of plastic-bag trees; hedgerows and verges strewn with rubbish; every roundabout with its triangles of trash; town centres adorned with tins and cups on every level surface and beaches left like refuse-tips come the end of a sunny day? What have we been paying these people for? An ‘Environment Minister’s remit is, presumably, to protect the environment, but it couldn’t be clearer that Prescott, Heseltine, Spelman, Baker, Howard, Beckett, Miliband, Benn and so on have been taking the ****. This is an expression I HATE but here it seems appropriate…an unpleasant expression to describe an unpleasant problem ignored by incompetent charlatans, but they’re far from alone. These scheisters occupy similar positions right around the globe.
Anyone who considers such criticism beyond my station need only ask themselves what they – as an outdoor type and otherwise ordinary person with nothing much to lose - would do in the DoE’s driving-seat: wouldn’t YOU raise merry-hell at the scandalous state of the country and make it your very first priority to press for the heaviest-possible penalties and, possibly, imprisonment for litter-dropping, rubbish-dumping and fly-tipping? Why did the aforementioned tricksters hold back? You’d take the greatest joy, I’m sure, in occupying the front pages with your pledge for 100% plastics recycling – OR ELSE. And because you’re a sensible, conscientious, everyday Joe charged with doing a good job in exchange for a terrific job-package, you’d be banging the environmental drum abroad too, visiting your counterparts and Heads of State to agree alternative materials and clean-up programmes: what the hell has the Environment Minister in Indonesia been doing? IS there an Environment Minister in that country? Perhaps there is, but his or her job is to ruin the environment; the fact of flowing rivers packed solid from bank to bank with plastic cartons would suggest this is no joke.
As with so many other aspects of life today firm, uncompromising action is necessary whether it ‘offends’ or not. I haven’t dropped so much as a sweet-wrapper since the age of around 8; I have never slung an empty can or bottle; never dropped a takeaway carton from a car window and never left a scrap of litter in my swim. Doubtless there are many readers with similar credentials. If WE can do it, why can’t everybody else? And why can’t a GOVERNMENT pay a little less attention to trivia and legislate in no uncertain terms for alternative packaging materials and a 100% litter-free country? Austria achieved this, as did Switzerland and Germany, though judging by the oceans of junk and litter left by the recent waves of illegal immigrants it’s unlikely those countries will remain as pristine as they were. It is, then, even more important that the case for global zero litter tolerance is made a priority by the world’s civilised nations.
I count myself amongst those ‘…many, many others…’ Over 20 years ago I was writing articles for magazines and sending letters to newspapers highlighting the nightmare of plastics-production; I asked readers to imagine the world’s plastics manufacturers churning-out hundreds of thousands of plastic bottles and food containers every minute and to ignore their brief stay in cupboards and under kitchen sinks…just imagine, I asked, those products being for immediate disposal: how could we possibly keep up? How could we dig a hole fast enough and big enough to accommodate such volume? And if we were to opt for recycling, just how many recycling plants would be needed to make good the disposal of so much material?
Zooming-in Google Earth style to the roads of individual countries – let’s take Great Britain as an example – how can it be that successive ‘Environment Ministers’, MPs, Councillors and a small army of highly influential, well-paid civil servants haven’t noticed, apparently, the sheer ubiquity of plastic-bag trees; hedgerows and verges strewn with rubbish; every roundabout with its triangles of trash; town centres adorned with tins and cups on every level surface and beaches left like refuse-tips come the end of a sunny day? What have we been paying these people for? An ‘Environment Minister’s remit is, presumably, to protect the environment, but it couldn’t be clearer that Prescott, Heseltine, Spelman, Baker, Howard, Beckett, Miliband, Benn and so on have been taking the ****. This is an expression I HATE but here it seems appropriate…an unpleasant expression to describe an unpleasant problem ignored by incompetent charlatans, but they’re far from alone. These scheisters occupy similar positions right around the globe.
Anyone who considers such criticism beyond my station need only ask themselves what they – as an outdoor type and otherwise ordinary person with nothing much to lose - would do in the DoE’s driving-seat: wouldn’t YOU raise merry-hell at the scandalous state of the country and make it your very first priority to press for the heaviest-possible penalties and, possibly, imprisonment for litter-dropping, rubbish-dumping and fly-tipping? Why did the aforementioned tricksters hold back? You’d take the greatest joy, I’m sure, in occupying the front pages with your pledge for 100% plastics recycling – OR ELSE. And because you’re a sensible, conscientious, everyday Joe charged with doing a good job in exchange for a terrific job-package, you’d be banging the environmental drum abroad too, visiting your counterparts and Heads of State to agree alternative materials and clean-up programmes: what the hell has the Environment Minister in Indonesia been doing? IS there an Environment Minister in that country? Perhaps there is, but his or her job is to ruin the environment; the fact of flowing rivers packed solid from bank to bank with plastic cartons would suggest this is no joke.
As with so many other aspects of life today firm, uncompromising action is necessary whether it ‘offends’ or not. I haven’t dropped so much as a sweet-wrapper since the age of around 8; I have never slung an empty can or bottle; never dropped a takeaway carton from a car window and never left a scrap of litter in my swim. Doubtless there are many readers with similar credentials. If WE can do it, why can’t everybody else? And why can’t a GOVERNMENT pay a little less attention to trivia and legislate in no uncertain terms for alternative packaging materials and a 100% litter-free country? Austria achieved this, as did Switzerland and Germany, though judging by the oceans of junk and litter left by the recent waves of illegal immigrants it’s unlikely those countries will remain as pristine as they were. It is, then, even more important that the case for global zero litter tolerance is made a priority by the world’s civilised nations.
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