Whenever I ride my bike through the small forest near the Ottobrunn “Crema Gelato” on my way to the former airport, I see plastic containers from the café scattered all over the ground. When I ride to Unterhaching, the plastic waste lies between the cyclist’s path and the street.
Now I am on vacation in a beautiful Mediterranean country. And here in Greece, it is even worse than at home. Last year, I wrote about the waste (Vermüllung) on the Peloponnes. And we now make the same experience on our bike tours. Every few metres, you see excess amounts of waste – and always it also means heaps of plastic.
Together with friends, Günther Bonin founded a club . It is called “One Earth – One Ocean” and is supposed to make an end to all this plastic waste. On land – but also and in particular on the oceans.
Günther is a sailor. He cannot believe that, for instance, the plastic waste on the Pazific Ocean has a total dimension of as much as the area of Central Europe. And that nobody is interested! But he has some brilliant ideas what to do about it. Now he wants to work and fight for those ideas of his.
A short time ago, Werner Lorbeer demanded a global eco re-engineering in our IF-Blog. He, too, is right. Unless we start doing something soon, it might easily be too late all of a sudden.
It is important that we all change our awareness and behaviour. Basically, there should be no question about not throwing things away wherever you go. Of course, it would be even better if we did not even produce those materials. And above all: if we did not buy it. I can easily prove that you can do totally without plastic.
Besides, it is quite obvious that damage you never even inflict somewhere does not need to be repaired with much effort.
Provided it can be repaired at all. Perhaps our planet can be compared to a precious porcellan vase. When it breaks, it can probably be mended. But it will never be the same again.
We are one world. And we only have one world. Especially the rich nations have a special obligation to restore things to their original state. One of the reasons for this is that they were the ones who did most of the damage.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
I just read in the “Süddeutsche“ that there are said to be 8.7 million species on the world. The number includes an uncertainty factor of plus/minus 1.3 million. And that most of the species still have not been discovered. Zoologists discover about 6,000 species per year. At this rate, they would have to continue categorizing for 1,200 years in order to cover everything. But there is one “consolation”: it will not take that long before all species have disappeared.
Underneath, I read that the prodecessor of the Hubble telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, cost 8.8 billion USD. We cannot yet say how much S21 will actually cost, but I presume 5 billion USD will not suffice.
If we abondened just those two projects, we would have quite an ample financial start for One-Earth-One-Ocean or eco-reengineering. And there is probably a huge number of projects that could be abolished with even more justification.
P.S.1
On reading the current “Spiegel“ edition, I found an advert of the PCV industry. An outrage!
P.S.2
On the pictures you see a fairly waste-free zone in Finland, June, 2011.
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