How can we save the planet?

Recycling is certainly the buzz word of the moment. Everyone is recycling, even the children in schools are being taught to be some kind of ‘recycling officer’ for their homes. But why now, haven’t you all been recycling all of your lives. I have. I know in the past I’ve been looked down upon for wearing second hand clothes, saving all my glass jars, composting kitchen waste and for making do or mending. Oh yes, I have been mocked; even members of my own family have refused to come shopping in the charity shops. But guess what, I’m in fashion. I don’t drive; I haven’t been on an airplane, so my carbon footprint is small as well. So what’s made me so green, such an all round good egg? I will tell you my secret, Being poor. Yep, that’s it. Not having much expendable income has meant that I’ve been saving the planet.

 The powers that be have not made it easy to care about the environment.  Did you ask for our glass reusable milk bottles replaced by plastic ones? I didn’t.  How about the soda bottles, did you want them replaced with plastic ones?  Didn’t you have fun as a child collecting old pop bottles and getting money back on them from the corner shop, so they could be re-used? What about bread being put in plastic bags? Perhaps you like your bread sweaty and moist? I much preferred the wax paper and it was much kinder to the environment as it will rot away. Take for example the pizza I bought at the supermarket the other day. It had a plastic layer around the cardboard box, then another plastic layer around the pizza, which was sat on a big plastic lump.  Why?  I don’t know; just give me the pizza, in a cardboard box perhaps for hygiene. If I had the nerve I would love to unwrap all the extra packing at the checkout at the supermarket and leave it there. It would be good to take the same attitude as everyone else and say ‘it isn’t my problem, it’s yours now’. Surely it’s the manufacturers that need to be addressing these problems. But no I was wrong again.  Our council has decided to halve our rubbish collections, but no-one has asked the manufacturers to cut back on packing. So now my family has to do extra trips by car to the tip.  We worked out that this year we have made about 2 extra trips per month to recycle our plastic bottles and 4 trips to the local tip, which were lengthy, to get rid of everything else the council won’t take.  How is that helping the planet?  If every family in our street did this that is 660 extra trips by car to recycle plastic and 120 trips to the tip per year. That’s just one small street, what does this add up to per city?  Or per country. It makes my reusing of glass jars and changing to energy saving light bulbs pointless.

Did you see the the UN climate conference in Copenhagen? Did you notice how the world leaders all jetted in to save the planet? Couldn’t they have done this by video conferencing or made some gesture that they really care about the environment.  In the hall where they all made their speeches there were so many lights in the ceiling you could have probably lit up a small town. The best way they could have helped the planet cut back on its carbon footprint, would have been not to hold the conference. I suppose we have to be thankful that they are talking about the problem and pray it is not just more hot air. However I get the feeling if they do decide on something it will be you and me that will be expected to do something for the environment and not them.