Deforestation and plastic. Some thoughts.

I’ve been travelling around Asia for six months now and theres one thing I see constantly that troubles me. When buying a drink it comes in a plastic cup. This is sealed with a plastic bag, a plastic handle is then attatched before placing the beverage into a plastic bag. Convenient hey.

In Cambodia I spend a week between two islands. Every morning I took several large bags down to the beach a began to collect the rubbish piled up there. I collected around six large bags of plastic a day. Once I became to tired, sunburned, hot and dehydrated I sat back to admire my work. Guess what, you couldn’t tell I’d done anything at all. There were several other people helping me too, we didn’t even make a dent in the trash piling up on the beach.

The tide comes in wave after wave, bringing with it plastic upon plastic. Sometimes I was scared of jellyfish as the plastic bags filled up with water can look exactly the same. Imagine how many fish are decieved by this and eat the plastic. Then humans eat the fish. Do you want to eat a fish fed up on plastic bags?

Another thing baffling to me was in Sumatra. I took a five day trekk in the rainforest. Its beautiful, magical. So many animals, monkeys, orangutans, snakes, too many to list. All living in the thick of the trees. Around the trees are many different plants, bushes flowers, silently working for us, breathing in carbon dioxide, exhaling oxygen. Keeping us alive.

Outside of the protected national park there are many more trees. But not tall beutiful trees surrounded by think undergrowth, no. These are palm trees. Each one planted in its own large plot. Nothing growing around it. Why? Because the palm trees suck all the nutrients for the soil meaning nothing else can grow. The people that live there are trying to develop urban farming methods, in the JUNGLE. This is baffling to me. I believe it is a huge problem.

If we think what we’re doing, stop using single use plastic for everything, buy reusable cups, straws maybe we can make a dent in the plastic problem. Maybe we can’t its pretty out of control I can tell you that.

As for the rainforest. I want to say no to palm oil. If we stop using it the market will fall. Then maybe they will stop destroying the one thing that gives us oxygen. The rainforest. People say to me oh its about the money, we don’t have money. Guess whats expensive, divers will tell you, a tank of oxygen. If we keep cutting down the rainforest there will be none left and we will all be walking around wearing a mask and snorkel.

I really don’t know what the answers to these problems are but I’m thinking. If anybody has any ideas let me know!