PC: Mikala Connor
Environmenmental pollution is an incurable disease, it can only be prevented.”
Barry Commoner
Pollution is a slow poison
I hope you closely examined the picture above. I hope you noticed that the water is crystal clear and the sand is colored with waste. How did we even get here? How do we stop it? I obviously don’t have the answer to these questions nor am I a certified ecowarrior but after this experience, I hope to raise awareness.
I found myself among some of the bluest water I have ever seen. It was almost lovely to snorkel, once you accepted that the coral reefs were a shadowey grey and embedded with human waste. When putting ideas together about my Phu Quoc holiday post, I considered all of the popular taglines: beautiful, snorkel, nature, crystal clear water, beaches and so on and on. No one wants to mention the less popular things about their holiday but I’m here to keep it real and say … there was shit everywhere. This post is not to dog on Phu Quoc as I absolutely love the place and have been twice now. The lifestyle and simplicity of the island is incredible and I highly rate it. I just wanted to bring attention to something bigger than an instagram worthy looking holiday — we are destroying our planet.
Stats – Yeah, I did some research
So I live in Shanghai, China and we live and breathe food delivery. Actually, anything delivery. It’s a bit of an addiction when you realize you can’t resist the ease of ordering any meal/snack you want and having it sent right to your door within the hour. I am guilty of this, most of the people I know are guilty of this. It’s how the city works. With delivery comes packaging and with packaging comes plastic and you know who is responsible for literally half of the worlds plastic production? ASIA! Having said that, according to National Geographic, China does the second most of the worlds plastic recycling just behind Europe. So we see the problem and we are taking action, but what would it take to recover these beaches, save the marine life consuming tiny pieces of plastic on a daily basis & restore our planet for our children?
Getta cleanin’ mates!
Thankfully I work for a really cool company who put together a beach clean-up day! Shanghai isn’t known for its beaches but we do have a coastline and it’s not pretty. We spent hours walking up and down the footpath collecting cigarette butts, bags, feminine products (that’s right… all drains lead to the sea) but most importantly, single-use plastic. Single-use chopsticks were among the most common items found on the beach. As rewarding as I would like to say this was, it wasn’t. There was more trash within the 300 meters we were working on than we could handle. I know in the scheme of things, we did make a small difference but honestly, it is hard to see. There was just SO much!
Guilty as charged
As I mentioned before, I am guilty too. Pictured to the right is the amount of waste I have accumulated in less than 24 hours. That’s right, less than 24 hours. There are a few plastic straws in there, several sets of single-use utensils, plastic, super unnecessary and oversized bags, and more plastic. My apartment complex doesn’t even have recycling bins so this stack is going directly in the trash. Before you hate on this, the theory is that labor in China is so cheap, someone down the line is being paid to sort the garbage and recycle what needs to be recycled. That’s what we’re told anyway, I hope it’s true. Many options come to mind when addressing this issue but here are the two big ones for me, quit ordering or promote reusable bags. In my time in Shanghai, I have come across ONE establishment that sends their deliveries in reusable bags. If you collect five of them and return them to the driver on your next delivery, you get a coupon for your next order. That’s brilliant. The company may eventually save money on purchasing single-use bags, the packaging is recycled and there’s one less bag headed to the beach. I see where it could go wrong and companies would lose money, but what if they created a loyalty program on the delivery app (eleme), where users can check whether or not they want to recycle their packaging and the restaurant will ship accordingly. Consumers could earn points, we could still get our irresistible deliveries and we wouldn’t be wasting nearly as much. I don’t have the slightest idea who to talk to about this idea so I ignored my consumption under the impression that little me couldn’t make a difference (as most of us do) but then I realized I could. I’m a teacher.
Education is key
For summer camp, I chose Environmental Awareness for our STEM hour. The course was a month long and I was given free rein as to how I wanted to teach the course. We started off with basic information, as they are all ELL kids (English language learners), I had to teach them the word pollution. Surprisingly, many of the kids had a good idea about the topic and were very interested. The course was focused on marine life and our oceans. We did the classic celery in the food coloring water demonstration as well as the Freddie the Fish sponge demo where the fish soaks up everything in the water (great visual btw). Ultimately, we did a small ocean clean up simulation where the students had to “purchase” cleaning materials and clean the bin of water in front of them. The group with the cleanest water at the end, wins. I spent a week carefully collecting trash for the simulation as I wanted it to be as realistic as possible. By the end of the demonstration, every group had two things in the water they could not get out; oil and tiny bits of styrofoam. Styrofoam is not entirely recyclable and it kills marine life that ingests it as it takes 500 years to decompose!
Having added feathers to the rubbish, the students realized that pollution not only affects fish… it affects birds as well as all wildlife. Above you can see some snaps of the kids’ reactions to cleaning the water. As a result, not a single group was able to clean the water completely. I was really impressed with how interested the kids were as well. Not only did they love getting their hands dirty, I genuinely think they will remember this activity and be more aware of human waste. As I said before, I had no idea how to help. I still use straws from time to time, I order food delivery, I buy plastic water bottles…. I am a full-on consumer. Working on my consumption is of course on the table, but most importantly I am going to work on education because that’s where it matters most. If we can teach the young ones about this we can help raise innovators, creators, and inventors to help in the future. As the quote at the top of the page goes ” Environmental pollution is an incurable disease, it can only be prevented” we have to remember that our contributions DO matter. Whether you are an educator, consumer, or an ecowarrior cleaning up beaches by hand… it matters. I leave you with this…
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meraki mik 