On Tuesday, May, 10th, Günther came for a visit. He is an old friend of mine. We played soccer together for many decades. He wants to talk with me about a few new business ideas. Some of his ideas are courageous, but they are the same as mine. One of them is to clean the oceans from waste.
Once in a while, my family calls me cranky. I am sure they are right. But then, who of is is not sometimes a little cranky?
My crankiness, however, is somewhat special. I refuse to eat yoghurt or drink buttermilk if these very tasty things have come out of plastic containers.
Besides, it is hard for some of my family to sympathize with me buying a soap box. I went back to cleaning my body at the public swimming pools with soap, instead of using shampoo or any of all those other colourful and extremely expensive toiletry articles. They all come in plastic containers or sprays and fill metres of shelves in our drugstores.
Now I got some support.
The „Süddeutsche“ Weekend Edition of May, 14th and 15th was a great help. In this edition, you could read the article “knowledge“ on page 10 of part one (there was even quite a fat notice about it on the title page!). And on this page, they were writing exclusively about plastic waste and the consequences thereof!
For me, it was not precisely news. A sister of one of my colleagues at InterFace is a chemistry graduate and she is my personal advisor, telling me that matters are actually as atrocious as you can read in the newspaper. Consequently, I try to boycott all plastic containers. Incidentally, it is quite hard to stick by that rule.
Imitators would, however, be very welcome!
So I looked for more interesting information on the topic and found the blog Telepolis, an article in the Welt and, of course, something in Wikipedia. And I also found out about activities by Ocean Care and Nabu.
Why don’t you take a closer look – even if it hurts!
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
I took the picture on the ferryboat Sophokles of Anek Lines. They service the route between Venice and Patras. It contains the
REGULATIONS OF GARBAGE DISPOSAL AT SEA
ANNEX V OF MARPOL 73/78
For an enlargement of the picture, click on the button – and then you can read what you might „legally“ despose of in the ocean!
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