“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” -- Mother Theresa
This quote is a wonderful way to look at our ability to make changes that can affect our ecosystem. Reduce, reuse, recycle, is another way to put it. With a heavier reliance on reduce and reuse than recycle! Recycling just may not be enough.
As a population, we are consuming too much, too fast with which to ever be able to keep up. Our “throw away” lifestyle has to be recognized as a lifestyle where nothing is really thrown “away.” Though we may not like to think about it, all of this stuff has to go somewhere! And, plastic itself isn’t the problem. After all, plastic was created to replace the use of other resources like tortoise shell, bone and ivory (which was used for everyday products) thereby, saving many animals like elephants from extinction. And, as you may know, plastics are also conduits for supplying electricity all over the world. Yes, plastics are used for thousands of applications, this doesn’t make it ok, but plastics will continue to exist until an alternative, eco friendly material is found. Because this may not come about soon enough, the way we look at being consumers may be the thing that needs to change instead, in order to see any positive results.
Buying things second-hand is a good way to lessen the demand for the mass production of single use plastics and other throw-away products, (plastic isn’t the only problem!). This is something that can be taught to children (consumers in training), as they (we all) are lead to believe that if we buy reused, we will be looked at as poor or unfashionable. We are all capable of making small changes that can make a difference. For example, utilizing reusable market bags, purchasing products that don’t require much packaging or none at all, switching to things like bamboo toothbrushes and shampoo bars and buying quality products made to last, instead of cheaply made things that will be thrown away and repurchased again and again.
No one can do it all, but everyone can do something!
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