How Serious Are We?
Posted on February 17 2022,
There has been a lot of talk over the last couple decades about climate change and each year - like the weather - the topic gets hotter. The Canadian government has implemented the beginning of a single use plastic ban - something else that has been talked about more heavily in recent years. But how serious are we?
When plastic first came on the scene most people fell in love with it as they easily adaptable product that could do everything from brushing your teeth to attaching an astronaut to the space ship during space walks. We went from refillable products like he classic milk jug to single use bags, from razors that outlast our body hair to body hair that outlasts razors and we didn't stop to consider the consequences.
Einstein maybe said it best "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." For years we have watched as the world has become more and more polluted. So how serious are we?
We love to say "it's not about each person making a million changes, it's about a million people making changes". But as individuals we can only do so much. One of the things we can do is to tell our government what major changes we want to see. Whether that is community compost pickups, reducing single use plastic to things larger than straws, take out containers and plastic bags like grocery items, ziplock bags and containers the products are packed in or this.
This blows my mind.
There were over 35 million vehicle registrations in Canada in 2019. Which means a safe guess is that there are 70 million to a billion plastic jugs of windshield wiper fluid sold each year. How many vehicles have to go to a gas station? So why don't we have a seperate spot - similar to the tire air pump - to fill our windshield wiper fluid? This has bothered me so much that I almost always run out of windshield wiper fluid and then go on my own little rebellion refusing to buy it , washing my windshield with water manually....the first time I learned the hard way you cannot wash your windshield by pouring water out of the sun roof - it comes back in ... through the sun roof! Same goes for all the Diesel vehicles built after 2010 that require DEF fluid to reduce nitrogen oxides and air pollution that are sometimes required as frequently as every single day depending on what diesel vehicle it is. These measures are put into place for environmentally friendly reasons...but just create more waste. Yes. Waste. Only 9% of Canada's recyclables were actually recycled in 2016. 86% of the over 3.2 million metric tonnes of recyclables end up in the dump, 4% go to incinerators and 1% end up as litre.
So, how serious are we? Serious enough that we want to make the changes we can because it's what is good for us, our pocketbook and the environment both locally and globally. Or are we destined to prove Albert Einstein a genius over and over and over.
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