Weekly Musings: Oceans of Love
“Hope is important, because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
Two weeks ago, the World Economic Forum, an influential Swiss non-profit committed to improving the state of the world, released a sobering industry report. With the use of plastics expected to double in the next 20 years, the group concludes that by 2050, pound for pound, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans. Whoa! Imagine the indignation you would feel if someone dumped trash on your front lawn everyday! Suppose there was so much it started coming in your front door? And finally forced you to move?
Ocean trash presents a huge global problem, but because no country owns the oceans, no one is willing to fund the clean-up. While millions of pounds of trash eventually wash up on the world’s shorelines becoming someone's responsibility, the Pacific and Atlantic garbage patches, as they are called, continue to grow in size annually. In addition to the visible litter of bottles, packaging and abandoned fishing nets, millions of pounds of tiny floating plastic pieces that never entirely disintegrate but just keep getting smaller, are continuously shifting throughout the oceans by winds and waves. One Australian study concluded that nearly all of the world’s seabirds have eaten plastic, and plastic injestion has become unavoidable to marine life.
About one third of all plastic produced is improperly disposed of, most ending up in waterways. The problem is two-fold: careless waste disposal and overuse of plastic. But you can do something about this problem. Yes, your personal efforts at recycling and buying less or buying more sustainable products really do make a difference. Buy the product with less packaging whenever you can, buy less, buy second-hand, re-use items instead of “throwing them away.” Nothing gets thrown away; it all goes somewhere. Every little thing you do contributes to the whole, just like every minuscule piece of plastic has turned into floating trash islands in our oceans. It all matters.
Something else each person can do is to spend more time in nature. The more humans that are plugged into nature every second of the day, the better chance we have of waking up and recognizing that Earth is alive! Our survival depends on a healthy Earth. Get outside and plug into what’s going on in the natural world, which harmonizes your vibrations with Earth. The more harmonious we are with Earth and each other, the less likely we are to be destructive.
The Winter 2016 "Curriculum of Hope for a Peace World” newsletter offers these inspired quotes for motivation in whatever you do, but are especially applicable to cleaning up our planet:
“How wonderful it is that nobody need to wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” — Anne Frank
“See opportunities to show you care. The smallest gestures often make the biggest difference.” — John Wooden
Carol Bedrosian is the publisher of Spirit of Change holistic magazine. Email carol@spiritofchange.org.
See also:
EarthTalk: Plastic Bag Bans
The Number One Thing Each Of Us Can Do To Protect Biodiversity
