Just A Load of Old Rubbish

Howdy partners!!

The artist behind today's sculptural offering is clearly attempting to tell us all something about the scourge of rubbish. Maybe even alluding to how waste has become an absolute blight our landscapes and ultimately to our existence. I don't think it's a bad idea at all to highlight this issue at all, on the contrary, it's very praiseworthy.

Most of us really do need to think a lot more about our own rubbish disposal actions; and the whole range of very serious problems that are happening because of some of our bad practices.

I can easily recall the time when I first heard the term "pollution". I was still a student at high school and the word had only recently been coined in relation to the vast clouds of smog which were gathering in Californian valleys due to industrial waste output. Up until that time, I was, like most Australians, happy to do such things as blithely throw waste out of moving cars without giving it a second thought. As I became more and more familiar with the term pollution, however, it soon became abundantly clear that unless we all take some kind of responsibility for our actions, the world was soon going to become a cesspool of waste.

An unsavoury example that confirms this may already have happened is the Great Pacific garbage patch. This ugly and vast phenomenon was first identified via satellite images, only in 1988. More modern research has revealed the huge island of plastic and toxic waste ( brought about by the vortex of tides which carries the debris from all over the world) is now about the size of Texas above the water, and roughly equal in size to continental USA under the surface. It really is a travesty of catastrophic proportions and also a classic case of out of sight, out of mind. So far, there are no obvious solutions about how do deal with this very significant blight on our planet.

I can offer a short story which may give some small insight into how such an ugly thing has came about. I lived in the wonderful country of Thailand for some time during the 1990's. During that time the country was still going through a rapid transition from a primarily agricultural society to an industrial one. Thai street food, as most will agree, is truly delicious, and the Thai people themselves have a huge love of it for that very good reason. Prior to heavy industrialization, Thai street food tended to predominantly be served on either crockery from the home or on a number of natural products, such as banana leaves, bamboo and the likes. As labour was sucked to the big cities for employment, time became poorer, and the food came to be conveniently served in little plastic bags sealed with rubber bands. A typical meal might involve several bags for the meat and vegetables, separate bags for the rice, sauces and condiments; and even a separate bag for the iced drink. Imagine the number of waste plastic bags generated with this happening millions of times over, three times a day. In the absence of public waste bins, much of the debris made its way into thousands of klongs and waterways which serve the nation both as a transportation network and also for sanitation and drinking purposes. All of these waterways feed eventually into larger rivers, which then transports the floating detritus out into the Bay of Thailand. As plastic is light and relatively buoyant, it doesn't always sink to the bottom of the ocean, instead it remains subject to the movements of the sea.

I'm certainly not intending to single Thailand out as the only contributor to the formation of the Great Pacific garbage patch. The example above is just what i happened to see with my own eyes. I'm certain similar waste generating processes are taking place all across the planet in varying degrees.

With a bit of luck, the crushed can featured in today's picture offering might encourage some of us to at least be a bit more careful when we think about how we dispose of our unwanted or non re-useable waste.