Green Sleeves
The band wagon is running and on board is a motley gang of humans of all sizes, classes or denominations. Every one wants to paint the wagon green. Nobody really knows where the paint pot is but everyone is looking for it. In the meantime wheels are falling off. Doesn't matter. They are still driving along.
One of the occupants of that doubtful chariot put a well placed spoke in the rolling racket lately by condemning domestic flights anywhere like London to Manchester in UK. He advised travellers to choose the train instead. Surprise.. Surprise. Richard Branson put his foot in it. He just happens to own Virgin Trains whose main route is, you have guessed it: London to Manchester. At double the price of the airline ticket. How very green are your convictions compared to the greenies in your bank accounts?
Every passenger on that charabanc has got a unique way to upset the equipage. A government minister makes a show of cycling to Parliament. Very green. What is off colour is the fact that a car follows him carrying his briefcase and a change of clothing.
Technology and our natural laziness have created the wasteful throwaway society we are stuck with. We do not repair anything, we trash it. Mind you to find an artisan these days who is willing to fix your toaster is a task not to be undertaken lightly unless you have a supply of Prozac handy. So the useless object ends up in a landfill to join thousands of other items, like unwanted dogs at the municipal pound.
Landfills are convenient black holes found in any ancient mining countries like Spain or UK and many others. Once in the hole our waste forms a dark toxic miasma. It affects underground water sources and eventually finds its way into the main water supplies, the soil and the air. Food waste releases methane for everybody to breathe. A vast fart on a mondial scale.
Organic matter like fruit and vegetable take about two years to disintegrate. Ask anyone who is the new enthusiast for a compost heap. Paper takes half a century, aluminium cans and foil about 100 years. The top of the pops are plastic bottles. Those take their time: 450 years at least. Imagine that if the workers building the Colegia Santa Maria in Antequera in mid 16th century had been drinking their wine or mead or whatever they were allowed to drink in those days out of plastic bottles those containers would just about have decomposed by the time I am writing this.
On average each of us in the Western world disposes of seven times our body weight in rubbish every year. With the ancillary waste that we use to keep going, including all those infirm toasters, dodgy TVs, still useful ovens and so on we generate about 20 tons of sludge each per year. An astonishing figure. Considering that there are more or less 8 billions of us sharing that rock it is a foregone conclusion that we are going to collapse under our own s…
Recycling seems to be the answer. But this is another wheel of the wagon that is wobbly. We live in a neighbourhood right up a steep couple of stairways. There is a bottle bank that has not been emptied for the 5 years we have lived here. The nearest paper bank is by the down town covered market. I do not know if you have noticed that newspapers and magazines carry enormous weight. I am, of course talking about the paper and that filthy cheap ink they use nowadays. Not the contents. To carry a bundle of that weight all the way down town is impossible for most people. Recycling bins for plastic bottles, cans and other unmentionable items do not exist. So most of it goes into the communal bin at the end of the alleyway. To the delight of children, stray dogs and cats, adding local colour to our delightful barrio.
I hope that my friendly editor includes the photographs of a bag that I carry in my handbag. (He will - as soon as the photographs have arrived at VeoVeo. The Editor).
It seems to me that there is an easy solution to the problem of all that useless packaging from hundreds of different plastic bottles and containers like all those awful yoghourts and industrial puddings fighting for space on the shelves of the supermarkets.
First, do not buy anything that is "overpacked". Who wants to go through three layers of paper and plastic to get to the item that one has actually bought? Has anyone actually studied the devilish way that some milk bricks are fitted with an impossible plastic gadget at the top to make sure that the awful product inside is kept "fresh" in your fridge? It is an expensive way to con a customer. And those milk bricks are made of various materials and therefore difficult to recycle.
Let the supermarkets collect the empties from your front door. On a specified day you could put your empty plastic bottles, cans, plastic tubs in THEIR plastic bags that advertise freely their wares for you to carry home, and then the supermarkets collect and recycle. At their expense.
And don't let me loose on the matter of plastic bags that are freely flying over our heads, under our feet, in our faces wherever you live. They are a menace and should be banned.
The supermarkets have successfully killed the village shops, the corner shops, the small family businesses. It is time that they put something back into a society which is struggling to keep up with the tide and invasion of useless items. What was wrong with buying rice, lentils, dried beans, chickpeas etc. from a Hessian sack? It was scooped up with a small metal shovel and put in a paper bag. The vegetables, meats and cheeses were weighed and wrapped up in greaseproof paper. I remember washing those sheets of greaseproof paper and letting them dry on the line for baking. Try to do that with plastic bags.
Of course it took a little time.. But we were not glued to stupefying idiotic programs on TV.
I buy my wine from the barrel at Mollina vineyard or our corner shop. I use litre bottles of beer well washed up. It is a recognised measure. The bottles, once empty, are rinsed and kept aside for further refills. I have learnt to put a large felt tip sign on the beer label saying "VINO" after somebody of my entourage helped himself or herself of what looked like beer and swallowed a half pint of wine in one go.
On the positive side of it worldwide scientists of grand standing are in the unanimous consensus of opinion that the impact of human kind over the planet is minimal. The planet lives its own life with all the changes that go with the process.
According to Dave, my American correspondent for many years, the Mayan calendar ends at the winter equinox of 2012. Done. Finished.
I quote: "On that date, modern astronomics have confirmed, the sun, earth and most of the planets will line up with the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. It might cause the earth axis to shift, the magnetic axis? Will it produce earthquakes and volcanoes to erupt?"
End of quote.
Supposedly it happens every 28.500 years. We are due for it in 5 years. Long term investments are out and it will not matter that Social Security funds will run out in 2017.
That is the last wheel of our wagon going into the ditch.
The sleeves are not green anymore.
Mud is the colour of the day.
Jocelyne
