Plastic
by Matthew Neville
Autumn on the allotment is all about preparation and closing down for winter.
One of the challenges of my particular plot is how much rubbish I have to deal with. A previous plot-holder evidently thought it an excellent idea to bury bags of rubbish on part of the plot; over time these bags have partially disintegrated mixing plastics and glass with what would otherwise be good soil. So, one of the highly annoying jobs I have to undertake is digging out that area, and spadeful by spadeful sift it for rubbish.
This isn’t the only problem, there also seems to be a steady stream of general litter which blows in, probably from the nearby park.
I wonder if, when all is said and done about my life, the most valuable work I will have done is simply to cleanse this little patch of earth, putting right a tiny spec of the damage we humans have inflicted on this planet.
Because increasingly I see my little allotment as a microcosm of something much bigger.
We are drowning in non-recyclable, and non-reusable, waste. All the endless plastic bottles, and packets, and film lids, and plastic bags. Very few of these are recycled, and those which are tend to be down-cycled into something which can only be used once more.
If disposed of responsibly, then these items end up either in landfill polluting somewhere, or burnt into the atmosphere and polluting there.
If not disposed of responsibly, they end up in hedgerows, parks, back alleys and in laybys on country lanes. There they will sit for many many generations.
Once we come to our senses in a hundred years or so, as we will surely have to one day;
then we will weep at what we have done.
My great-grandchildren will rightfully be angry. (If you are somehow reading this one day……. Know that I am sorry)
The clear up process is going to be a major task, taking many decades or longer. I like to imagine that my small efforts to clear my allotment are a beginning to that clean up.
Equally, I don’t kid myself. I know that I am deeply implicated in the collective destruction we’re all enacting on our planet. Too often I feel quite powerless to stop, or even slow down, the slow motion desecration of our beautiful earth.
So what can be done?
Historical precedents for our current destructive way of life are limited; it’s only since the invention of synthetic plastics that we have had substances which don’t eventually compost back into the earth.
For that reason the artefacts left for us from previous eras are vanishingly small, especially beyond a few hundred years. For millennia and longer the earth’s natural systems have gifted us ways to dispose and repurpose.
Writings which can speak to this moment are limited, but not wholly absent.
In the bible. Isaiah 14, tells of the cedars and cypresses celebrating when empires fall, because now no one will come to cut them down. Perhaps the hedgerows of England will also celebrate when our current empire of over-consumption falls
The prophet Habakkuk speaks of environmental destruction as a consequence of unjust human relationships. Words which need revisiting in our current moment.
Similarly, Hosea 4 speaks of nature dying because of human injustice.
What the prophets all have in common is a mixture of anger and lament. It seems to me that we need a bit of that now. To feel the pain of all that, to get angry, and then to weep.
The solution? A return to right-living. A way of life in harmony with nature and with God.
Here are some paths I am going to try and live ……
1) Recognise the harm……… this blog post is in a sense my mea culpa.
2) Clean up where I can. However pointless and hopeless it all feels. To do what we can to leave this world a little cleaner than it would otherwise be.
3) Stop acquiring plastics wherever possible.
4) Use my voice to keep saying it’s wrong.
And
5) To weep for what we have done.