It’s a small gesture, but it’s a Glocal action of great significance and importance.
Every time we go on an excursion, we put a bag in our backpack to collect any rubbish we might find along the way.
A snack wrapper, a small plastic bottle, or a chocolate bar wrapper left behind not only spoils the beauty of the landscape but also takes a long time to degrade.
And given enough time, the small bottle, for example, could be washed down the slope, reach a temporary riverbed and then, rain after rain, travel along the various watersheds, reach a real mountain stream, then a tributary, then a major river and, after even more time, the sea.
In the sea, it will be carried away by one of the invisible roads calledcurrents, stopping only where they all converge.
The plastic bottle, corroded by sun and salt, will not reach those places where the currents arrive intact, but will have been destroyed into pieces of different sizes, even microscopic ones!
Some links:
- https://www.algalita.org/
- http://www.plasticreef.com/
- https://wharferj.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/the-great-pacific-trash-vortex/
And that piece of trash left in the woods where our trail passed, now that it has broken down into many tiny pieces, can even enter the food cycle of fish!
This is one of the most difficult environmental and biological disasters to manage, and one to whichthe scientific community and others are beginning to try/find solutions.
Life originated in the oceans, but our short-sightedness and selfishness are putting a strain on ocean life and, as a result, our own.
With a small bag in our backpack, we can do a lot!
