10 November 2021

Environment

Of course there are many useful environmental lessons that might be learned from reflecting  on what happened on Easter Island. The first settlers discovered a sub-tropical Garden of Eden - forested and green with multitudes of seabirds. There they might have made their own lasting earthly paradise but through ignorance and carelessness and other typically human traits, they gradually destroyed it till there were no trees left and the seabird population was decimated. When the first Europeans arrived Easter Island's heyday was long gone. Where once there had been forest there was now nothing but barren grassland.

"The Guardian" newspaper recently announced the winners in an international environmental photographer of the year competition, organised by environmental and water management charity CIWEM and WaterBear, a free streaming platform dedicated to the future of our planet. The awards celebrate humanity’s ability to survive and innovate, and showcase thought-provoking images that highlight our impact and inspire us to live sustainably. (Language from "The Guardian")

I have chosen two of the winning images to share with you, both are from Bangladesh.

In this drone image by Ashraful Islam, a flock of sheep at Noakhali seek water on the cracked earth. J guess there's an anxious shepherd under the umbrella. Though Bangladesh has often had to deal with terrible coastal flooding, in some inland areas droughts have become more frequent and basic survival more challenging:-


The second image is from Chittagong and it is by Subrata Dey. A little boy sits on a rough homemade ladder that reaches up a veritable mountain of used plastic bottles. Plastic recycling has become a significant industry in Bangladesh where much of the sorting is done by hand:-

Shirley and I are pretty scrupulous about recycling plastics, tins, glass, paper and in fact anything else that might be recycled. However, I worry about where our stuff goes. The authorities seem to deliberately shroud their recycling procedures in veils of mystery. I fear that some of our waste plastic might be on that pile or on its way to Indonesia or Malaysia or certain African countries. This is a matter that COP26 might have addressed - to bring about recycling transparency and internationally agreed processes and rules. Sometimes you wonder if they really care.

24 comments:

  1. My daughter says that recycling can be a scam and that most of the U.S. stuff has been going to China, although they're starting to refuse it.

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    1. Our leaders like to keep us in the dark about many things - just ask Julian Assange!

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  2. I have no faith whatsoever in plastic recycling. I truly believe that plastics may be what kills us all in the end.

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    1. Apparently, we are breathing in invisible particles of the stuff all the time and so are Levon and Phoebe.

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  3. For the most part, I don't think most people care, as long as they don't have to look at it. I recycle, compost and don't litter. I pick up the litter of others and when I do that, I realize how little people care. Transparency in recycling would be good, let us know if anything we're doing makes a bit of difference.

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    1. The people need that clarity and encouragement.

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  4. Sometimes you wonder if they know anything. There are many very practical things that could be done and make a difference.

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    1. I agree - like reducing packaging and making all packaging easy to recycle. Do they really care?

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  5. Terrible and thought-provoking images.

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    1. "Terrible" is the right word or in German - "abscheulich" - in case you didn't know.

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    2. I thought abscheulich was abominable, and the equivalent to terrible "furchtbar" or "fürchterlich".

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    3. Google Translate is NEVER wrong!

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  6. Sometimes it all just seems too overwhelming to me. I can't see any way back.. or forwards.. out of this situation.

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    1. You and I will be dead when the shit really hits the fan but what are we leaving behind?

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  7. You're right YP, and I wonder if those responsible for handling the recycling really care. It looks good, when figures are bandied about, but where exactly does our carefully disposed recycling really end up? Given the amount we must all have, it would be difficult to successfully re-use. I, too, fear it ends up in that pile that young boy is sitting on.

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    1. Every two weeks the council take away our brown wheelie bin's contents - glass, certain plastics, tins. It's nearly always full and it's the same at every other house on the street. They cannot reuse it all. Probably they don't even try.

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  8. I still haven't got over that picture you posted of the contents of the albatros chick's stomach.

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    1. It's all so real now. There's a dirge playing in the background. Can you hear it?

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  9. Meike took the words right out of my mouth. :(

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    1. She's good at that because she considers most things carefully.

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  10. We might yet be the killers of our own species. 50% of men cannot produce fertile sperm because, guess what, of the plastics we ingest through multiple sources including our water.

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    1. Hell, it's even in the air and yet you and I grew up with very few worries about plastic or oil or even coal. What the hell have we done?

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  11. Astonishing images - as the say goes, they paint a thousand words... Much of our recycling is not as it seems and the uses for say glass (often used in road surfaces) would surprise some. Paper recycling on the other hand is surprisingly efficient when done in bulk. I guess the key challenge is to stop producing so much of the stiff in the first place. I 'm all too aware that I'm as guilty of over consumption as many others.

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    1. I also plead guilty. We need real leaders to lead real change - not passing puffed up egotists like Johnson, Putin. Trudeau, Morrison and Macron.

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Mr Pudding welcomes all genuine comments - even those with which he disagrees. However, puerile or abusive comments from anonymous contributors will continue to be given the short shrift they deserve. Any spam comments that get through Google/Blogger defences will also be quickly deleted.

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