@ChrisMayLA6 Back in 2010 I was fortunate to find myself in Ladakh, in northern India, in the Dumra valley – the valley of flowers, in Tibetan. In the village of Thirit there was a little boy, who accepted a present from a tourist: a sweet. Took it, unwrapped it, and discretely dropped the plastic wrapping paper on the floor. Against the backdrop of sand, soil, and plants, the shiny wrap stood out like a sore. The tourist picked it up and, pointing to the nearest bin by a door, illustrated what one is supposed to do with it.
What the tourist didn't understand is that the boy lived in a world were sweets were not wrapped in a material that can't decompose. Like my own grandma, back in inland Catalonia, who had no concept of trash: the refuse either went to animal feed, or to the compost pile, or to lit the wood stove. And it is this world that we seemed to have forgotten that actually has a future, because it is one were sustainability is baked in. One in which there is no need in the first place for unnecessary plastics.
Ladakh had just emerged from a communal effort to clean up the land from the many plastic bottles that littered the landscape. The arrival of bottled water with their short-term convenience combined with unmatched expectations of what happens to the containers when abandoned – like the caramel wrap – led to a saturation of every canal and trail with empty bottles. Thankfully collective action addressed the issue – but largely banning such ill-thought out single-use containers. The rest of the world ought to follow suit: most of these plastics in the image are bottles.
#EcosystemCollapse #PlasticPollution #plastics
