I'm angry, so very angry!

Western societies are heavily involved in recycling rubbish involving material separation, often involving detailed separation of materials before they are collected. In many places, indeed, people and companies are fined, with specialist investigators going through their rubbish and/or recyclables in order to check if they have done the right thing. Yet as far as I can see this approach is not solving the fundamental problem we face as a society, which is that we throw away far too much material, including packaging, for little reason and with hardly a thought about the consequences of our actions.

This makes me angry, of course, as it may many (some?) of you. What makes me far, far more angry is the fact that so many of us seem indifferent to the problems faced by our society; so many of us seem unwilling to even move our little finger to help. The excuses are many and various but unconvincing as it takes little effort to do things properly rather than not but it seems even that is too much. This indifference makes my blood boil and, I admit that I react badly - the words I use are choice, so much so that I was recently taken to task for swearing by someone who heard me and was offended by the words, but certainly not by the fact that people were messing up the recycling system.

And that, I'm afraid, seems typical of our approach to the problems or the rubbish mountains clogging our planet - as long as we cannot see them or we weren't the ones being stupid and inconsiderate we can ignore the problem, and never mind the plastic choking our seas and being buried to last for a few thousand years... Not our problem!

I will continue getting angry, continue to swear and continue to fight for people to use the systems already put in place correctly, with respect. But I have no intention of stopping there, as I want to see the whole recycling system overhauled, made more realistic, effective and easier to use, otherwise it will be far less effective than it can and should be.

Protecting our planet takes a bit of effort on our part, as I've probably said before and will certainly say again, and again, and again, until people accept it and do their bit. Our planet is the only one we have and it's there for our children, their children and hopefully many more generations to come, but we urgently need to improve the way we look after it. No, it will not heal itself though it has certain self-healing powers; we are introducing materials to it that are alien and cannot be absorbed. We are responsible for a lot of the damage done and must do better... MUST DO BETTER, no ifs or buts!

I will continue getting angry, very very angry, until we do. So don't worry about my swearing, worry about why, and do better. That'll keep me quiet.