The Way Forward

I just stumbled across an old Youtube clip of a 12 year old who rocked the Earth Summit in 1992. The 2 lines that stuck with me are:

If you don't know how to fix it, stop breaking it.

and

Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying, "it's not the end of the world, we're doing the best we can". But they can't.

http://criticaldocs.wordpress.com/2008/06/04/twelve-year-old-severn-suzuki-speaking-at-the-un-earth-summit-1992/

It's 6 minutes. You can watch it or read the transcript on that site. I suggest watching it.

The truth is we are very far from doing the best we can. I know I'm not doing the best I can every time I leave the tap running until I get hot water, or bathe in litres of water for only a few minutes, or throw stuff in the bin instead of the recycling because it's such a mission to clean it. The old recycling company I was using, stopped collecting certain items and now I have to find a new one. I also have to find out which companies are actually reputable because 3 years ago when I accidentally had an important certificate tossed into the recycling (the one proving I'd walked the Cammino di Santiago in its entirety) and I went driving around to find out where they'd dumped the stuff - I found to my horror that the company had no idea where the driver took the recycling! Basically the driver just collected stuff and took it wherever he liked. The guy running the municipal dumping site was drunk out of his mind (it was a Saturday morning) and the recycling company was just slightly apologetic about their driver. Whew. Eye opener.

A friend recently, when I asked if he recycled when we were tidying his kitchen, said "they need to make it easier for us to recycle". I know what he means, in South Africa it is still unnecessarily tricky to find a reputable company that collects everything recyclable and takes it to the right places. But who is THEY? The government doesn't really give a shit. Apart, that is, from the few people tasked with such issues who I don't believe are given the budget or authority to make much of an inroad. The problem with all this stuff is that there is no THEY. There is only us.

Some countries are getting it right I think, while admitting I know very little about this - Spain has recycling bins every few metres. But in France it doesn't seem to have caught on - yesterday in a Provencal market when I tried to insist the stall owners did not give me plastic bags as I had a large carrier to put all my things in, they were horrified and insisted I took their plastic bags anyway. What for?

I waste water.
I eat loads of protein which I know uses up a lot of planetary resources.
I don't always recycle everything.
I don't enquire into the practices of the companies I buy from.
I leave lights and electronic appliances on unnecessarily.
I keep buying clothes I don't really need.
I eat sushi without always checking whether the fish is from sustainable sources.
I have piles of electronic goods I don't use anymore, broken cameras, old computer bits and speakers and plug ins and printers.
I admit that more often than not, I am an unconscious consumer. (buying free range eggs and using organic paraben-free shampoo is not sufficient for me to claim otherwise)

I am guilty.

I wonder what it will take for me to stop feeling guilty (which indicates my awareness but doesn't change anything at all) and actually change my behaviour, so that I can honestly say, I am doing everything I can.