Boom-de-yada, Boom-de-yada, Boom-de-yada, Boom-de-yada

"For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out." - James Baldwin

I have a growing stash of plastic bottles in my kitchen. They need to be recycled. I, however, am undecided. I became jaded - quickly - about the process of recycling.

Last year while we were in Mumbai, Matt and I wanted to see for ourselves the Taj Mahal Palace hotel. We were skirted around and around the hotel by guards and security, thus we took multiple alternate routes. As it was only three weeks after the attacks in Mumbai, we - sick with the voyeurism that is sightseeing - made way for the Gateway of India, which was going to be as close as we could get. We were walking by the harbour when I looked down into the filthy water. For several feet into the harbor, there was more trash than water. I nearly vomited. That's when Matt informed me about the "islands of trash" in the Pacific. It was the first I'd heard. I was shocked and disheartened.


Meanwhile in Dubai, attempts at recycling were becoming more commonplace. When I had first arrived, the school was really the only place where I was confident that my acts of recycling were being honored. I would transport my recycling from home to the school and dutifully place my plastic bags and bottles in the proper containers. Sometime after the New Year, our apartment building similarly featured huge recycling containers outside. Since the United Arab Emirates has one of the largest ecological footprints per capita, (in 2006 the country had the second largest footprint per capita, and data was recently released from the IEA in 2009, but I have yet to find disaggregated information) and is one of the largest consumers of energy, I thought this was a major step forward.

I grew up recycling. "Keep Akron Beautiful" signs reigned supreme along the devil strips and in between lanes on the boulevards.

I made Recycled Art in sixth grade science class - I was so proud of it, I kept it for years - and Found Art in high school. In elementary school we received a tree to plant every year on Arbor Day. There was a $200 fine for littering in my town, and I most certainly scolded anyone who threw anything out of the car window.

Once I left home and moved to North Carolina, the recycling continued. In Chapel Hill we received the blue recycling bins, which in a college town, were continuously filled with beer bottles and wine bottles, and subsequently bottles of water. We even knew the drinking habits of our professors, one in particular who lived near us and drank Red Dawg (Red Dog) - he told us in class and his recycling bin confirmed it.

Thus, my entire life I have been environmentally conscious. Granted, I am not the poster child for Green-ness, I do occasionally forget to take my reusable bag made of organic materials to the store with me (even though it is hanging on the door just so I won't forget it), I still drive a car, and I do use a space heater during our desert winters, but I know what steps to take to help preserve our Earth and help reduce the damage us humans have done with our industrialization and our egocentric lifestyles.

So I thought.

But a few weeks ago I stumbled upon an article that has since changed the way I think and behave. One article has provoked my inner cynic to no end, has changed my habits completely, and made recycling and other earth-friendly habits cultivated for nearly thirty years optional.

The article, Afloat in the Ocean, Expanding Islands of Trash, written by Lindsey Hoshaw and published in The New York Times, and its accompanying slide show, Rubbish in the Pacific, have left me jaded and confused. It's all out there. Plastic toothbrushes. Styrofoam. Water bottles. Light bulbs. Barrels. Bottle caps. Construction barrels. Fishing nets. All in what scientists term "gigantic gyres" - the one featured estimated to be twice the size of Texas. These "islands of trash", the most notorious of which resides in the Pacific Ocean, hypothetically exist in five different locations in the world's oceans. The "Great Garbage Patch", the most frequently studied, doubles in size every decade, and some estimate it is as large as or twice the size of the continental United States.

I was in disbelief. I wanted to talk about it. Mister Meh, cynic that he is, proposed that this is the work of the mafia. That this gigantic gyre gesticulating with garbage is all about money. He said that it is far cheaper for those responsible for removing trash to drop it into the ocean, than for them to properly dispose of it. After all, those people don't care about Hawaii, and claims one article, there is trash from New York and Iowa in the gyre. While I love a good conspiracy theory and that is one that sounds likely, I would hate for it to be true. According to the majority of articles, the most likely reason that trash from all over the continental US is in the ocean is that it gets transported there from storm drains, streams, lakes, and rivers. Scientists and researchers have estimated that 80% of the rubbish is from land, while 20% of it is from ships - including cruise ships. Either way, I was shocked.

I have been in a state of disbelief for weeks now. All of the things we do - eliminate styrofoam; refuse to buy bulky packaging; say no to the shoebox; recycle, reduce, reuse; hold the wet, snotty tissue until we find a trash can; play with the empty, eight-hour old water bottle until we find a recycling bin; run back up the stairs for the hemp reusable bag - and then, there...in the oceans - islands of trash, toxic pieces of plastic poisoning our food supply and killing our fish.

His clutch play on his conspiracy theory - my friend said if the trash got there naturally, why would it only be in the Pacific Ocean? Good question and a question that has yet to be disputed. While scientists and researchers hyposthesize that there are five of these garbage islands in the oceans, they have yet to identify one as large and as harmful as the Eastern Garbage Patch. A graduate student studying the accumulation of plastic in the ocean attempted to find the same phenomenon in the wide Sargasso Sea, but stated that she "saw much higher concentrations of trash in the Pacific garbage patch than in the Sargasso,” Ms. Monteleone said, while acknowledging that she might not have found the Atlantic gyre’s highest concentration of trash." The young lady could not find a sample in the Eastern Garbage Patch that did not have plastic in it. But as inhabitants, of this Earth, what is it that we want from her study - do we want equal amounts of trash in each ocean so that we do not feel as responsible? So that we can brush our shoulders off and blame our sewage systems, streams, lakes, and rivers? So that we feel that we have done our part and whatever happens after we put our plastic water bottles in the recycling bin is beyond our control and therefore meaningless?

I wonder how many people know about the The Great Garbage Patch. I wonder how many people, scanning the newspaper for the latest news on health care reform, the latest on jobs numbers, the latest senator to cheat on his wife, realized that there is a war in the ocean and it is contaminating and killing our food supply?

"PCBs, DDT and other toxic chemicals cannot dissolve in water, but the plastic absorbs them like a sponge. Fish that feed on plankton ingest the tiny plastic particles....The researchers say that when a predator — a larger fish or a person — eats the fish that eats the plastic, that predator may be transferring toxins to its own tissues, and in greater concentrations since toxins from multiple food sources can accumulate in the body." Mmm...yummy.

I posted the debate on my students' discussion forum. A few of them were quite passionate in their responses, one decrying that "There are evidently a few people who give back to the environment but "a few" is not enough for us to save our planet. However, getting the world involved in cleaning up is a near-impossible task to accomplish. There will always be those who couldn't care less about these types of issues because they know that they won't have to face the serious consequences in their lifetime." From a pragmatic standpoint, she is correct. There are a few people (relatively) who have the time and the energy and the commitment to try and save our Earth, but there are also multitudes who do not recognize the harm to the Earth as immediate. While, yes, we may not be the humans who will witness the utter destruction of our planet, we are the humans who are consuming the food the planet provides. And if the food we are consuming is tainted - what happens to us? How much of a difference will health care reform make at the point?

Another student made her argument from an educational standpoint while her classmate attacked her from a sociological view. Student 1 felt that people in underdeveloped countries, such as Jordan and Egypt, needed to be educated about the consequences of their actions. She cited Cairo specifically, a city in which, I can attest to, you'll be hard-pressed to find a trash can. Even the area in Giza, around the pyramids, is littered with empty bags and empty bottles with nary a garbage receptacle in sight. Her classmate, Student 2, felt it was utterly unthinkable to expect people in underdeveloped and developing nations to be concerned with recycling when they had other needs to meet - namely nourishment and shelter - an idea Abraham Maslow may well have agreed with. She also stated that countries that produce more emissions - "developed" - should be more concerned with reducing the negative impact of humans on this Earth, since they contribute most to it. Clearly they were not going to solve this problem with one high school discussion forum, but at least they are thinking about it.

Once my apartment building in Dubai put in the recycling cage, people used it. It was full - of plastic, cardboard, glass, aluminum, styrofoam, paper, vacuum cleaners, strollers, shoes - you name it, it was in there. There is an element to the education piece. People do not want to live in filth. It is not as simple as thinking that people who live in poverty do not want a clean environment. The people want to help, they want to recycle, they want want to have a clean home and city, but in many cases, they have not been shown how. I learned, and others will too, with the appropriate education. I continued taking my recyclables to the school. At least we had verification that it got from the school to whereever it was supposed to go.

It is a new year and I have a new outlook. I have a new perspective on saving the Earth that is not as cut and dry as my childhood lessons made it. I am skeptical. For the first week or so after reading the November 9 article, I was angry. I was so angry I rebelled and I threw my recycling in the trash - to whom I was making a point, I do not know. But here's the thing - it becomes a matter of intention. Through this debate - whether to continue to recycle in the hopes that yes, I am doing my part, yes I am contributing to saving our planet , or to just throw everything away because it all ends up in the ocean - I have been brought back to a few guiding principles I learned long ago. The first, is as Gary Zukav presented in The Seat of the Soul - "You create your reality with your intentions". While it may sound a little new age or Secret-esque, there is some truth to this. The second is the philosophy of Ahimsa - non-harming - to live in a manner that I cause as little harm as possible. Call it a life philosophy or call it a mind trick, I have come to realize I must deal with my trash in a manner that reflects what I would like this life and this Earth to be. If I ignore all of the things I can be doing to help diminish the havoc we humans are wreaking on this planet, then I am contributing to harming it at the highest extent. If I do what I can - granted in the grand scheme of things it may be little - then I am contributing to the greater good and to reducing the damage on our planet. I may not know what happens to my waste after I sort it out and put it in the proper receptacles, but my intention is that it will not end up in the ocean and continue to contaminate our life sources and the life cycle.

So I will now get over my outrage and my disbelief. I will continue to use my reusable bags, especially since I hate the plastic bags and everything they stand for. I will continue to put my recyclables in the recycling. I will continue to refuse shoe boxes, and I will continue to refrain from buying products with excessive packaging. I will rely on MamAnomolie, my friend Rachel, and her eco-friendly advice as well as others. Despite the fact that we are unequivocally destroying our habitat at exponential rates, I will continue to remember Ahimsa and my intention to diminish the damage not only to our food supply, but to humans our homes.