Away has gone away
Once upon a time when we didn't want something anymore we just threw it away. But 'away' has gone away - the things we throw away end up somewhere. The rubbish that we don't want in our back garden will have to go somewhere, into somebody's back garden, or next to somebody's bit of land. So by keeping our own personal space clean and tidy and free from pollutants we are selfishly passing the problem onto someone else. You might think here that you have every right to do so because you pay your tax's and these include rubbish disposal, but that doesn't make the land fill site any better looking, it doesn't save the local living creatures from suffering from whatever poisons the land fill site has leached into the surrounding earth, or from the fumes belched out by the vehicles that are used to transport that rubbish around the world. Nor does it help the desecration caused to the earth by the mining required to build those vehicles, and those waste handling plants, and provide them with fuel and electricity.
I have recently become more and more aware of the amount of rubbish that I take home with me every time that I go to the supermarket. Rubbish that is called packaging. When I get home from the supermarket I can fill a bin bag with stuff that I have just bought that I didn't need, stuff that was there solely for assisting in the sale of what it contained. The cardboard box around my tube of toothpaste for example, or the cardboard box used to make my round pot of hummus square so it will stack easier, when the round pot was all that was really needed. The list goes on and on.
Supermarkets are becoming one of the dominant forces in the world. They could be considered to have more power than our governments in their ability to dictate prices and control farming issues. If the supermarkets wanted less packaging then the manufacturers would produce less packaging. If the supermarkets had to dispose of the packaging themselves then they would want less packaging. If you were to take any unnecessary packaging off your shopping items as you put them into your bags at the checkout and leave them there then the supermarket would have to deal with it. They would have to place them in their bins and pay for their disposal. If everyone did this pretty soon the supermarkets would be raking up huge disposal bills and they would have their manufacturers providing stock in the least packaging possible. If this happened we would all have a bit less to throw away and the world would be a little bit nicer because of it.
Phil
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The quote "Away has gone away" is attributed to William A McDonough
