Can’t throw it away, there is no away
Greta Thunberg’s energy has engaged the world’s youth — we need to join in
If I was to judge the impact of climate change based solely on the view from my backyard, in my little part of the world, I would likely conclude it’s not real. A variety of birds started chirping on cue recently with the woodpecker returning to “knock us up” in a timely fashion each day, as the British are blithe to say.
Feral cats are back on the prowl after surviving the winter through the kindness of strangers, not unlike the hundreds of humans who barely survived their experiences of being homeless in the Hammer and elsewhere over the last five cold months. (As if it’s OK to be homeless in the next seven warmer months.)
Tulips, daffodils and irises are on the rise, along with the temperatures, rearing their heads next to the ever widening rhubarb patch. Neighbours have completed their hibernations and kids have emerged in larger numbers than last year. Some are coming out to experience their first Spring ever while others are already used to the smells and bells of the season. All seem to make awfully big noises for their somewhat small frames.
Take Greta Thunberg. Oh, she’s not in my neighbourhood but she is a young person making an awfully big noise and thank goodness! While I actually do know climate change is real, this 16-year old from Sweden is calling on people who haven’t looked beyond their backyards and neighbourhoods to recognize just how big a deal it really is. Greta wisely believes Amnesty International when she hears the failure of governments to tackle climate change is “one of the greatest intergenerational human rights violations in history.”
Greta started skipping school every Friday a few months back to ask a simple question of the parliamentarians in her neck of the woods,“Why should we be studying for a future that soon may be no more?” Her energy has inspired youth around the world to do the same thing and she may win a Nobel Prize because of her efforts. More importantly, we all may win a future worth studying for if we take action.
I hung out with some youth from the Anglican Diocese of Niagara recently and they are inspired to take action. Each year participants in the Youth Synod develop motions connected to the issues they care about and bring them forward to the adults who make decisions. In 1989, the youth said no to styrofoam and the adults agreed. In 2009, the youth said yes to a diocesan Greening Committee and the adults agreed. Last week the youth called for an end to singleuse plastics throughout the diocese. Hopefully, the adults will agree.
Diane Saxe, the recently sacked Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, would definitely agree with the youth’s motion. Plastic water bottles are almost always an abomination in this province, she said recently in a CBC radio interview, except for First Nations communities, two thirds of which have contaminated water supplies.
It is better for the environment, and cheaper and safer for the individual, to buy a reusable bottle and fill it from the tap.
When it comes to Canada’s recycling efforts, Saxe is concerned. While she lauds the efforts of individual households for recycling, it is really businesses that must start being responsible for their part in all of this. In the meantime, I need to get better at my part.
At our household we have a gold box for our recycling, an outward sign of our inward apparently good sorting of plastics and paper. After listening to Saxe, I’m pretty sure the city folks dropped it at the wrong address. She encouraged everyone to read up on what your municipality accepts in the blue box. I did that and ended up with a new app on my phone.
Recycle Coach has already taught me a few things, like the inner milk bags I diligently rinse to go with the soft plastics must be thrown away.
Although Saxe taught me something new about that concept as well. With China refusing our garbage for a few years now and the Philippines trying to send back our 6-year old waste, “We can no longer throw things away because there is no away.”