Quote:
Originally Posted by Stu Jackson
Like backpackers.
|
My point exactly. I did a lot of what you might call extended wilderness tripping in my youth. The longest time I spent in the field was 63 days with a
single resupply, cached by sea plane we did not meet.
We packed out 8-1/2" weeks worth of trash and delivered it to a third world trash pit ourselves on foot and by hand and this was in the mid-eighties, at a time when the Pardeys were recommending people throw plastic in the ocean.
You can rationalize it however you want but that won't change the fact that you are polluting the wilderness for the sake of your own personal convenience every time you throw anything that is not organic overboard.
I really don't understand how having garbage spread all over the earth is preferable to having it semi-contained in a third world trash pit
In the trash pit it is somewhat confined in an area already ruined. Is it so much to ask that you put trash in its place, not the ocean?
Sure I have seen young people litter. I don't think it is a small coincidence that I mainly see them doing it in low-rent neighborhoods. What's your point? Are you saying that because you have a low-rent mentality, it's okay that you litter?
I concede that in the grand scheme of things metal and glass overboard
offshore by cruising sailors isn't likely going to be the death of us.
However, any assertion that what you are doing isn't littering or is somehow a good thing is ridiculous. I think probably most who would argue otherwise know this but can't admit it, I understand I am a human too.
At least if it goes into a third world landfill it's only adding to an existing concentrated blight. And hey, we're talking the dirt-world here which is basically ruined already anyway.
At the very least throwing metal and glass away is throwing away the non-renewable energy expending in making it and in a world increasingly challenged for energy resources that waste should not be discounted as insignificant.
You're a sailor, is it so much to ask that you become a defender of your domain instead of a destroyer?
P.S. Yes Ted Nugget, I did find the silver Sigg bottle with your note left behind at a location you flew to via turboprop but which I got to by foot and paddle. You're a litterbug. I packed out your Sigg bottle and note with all the rest of our garbage and dismantled the cairn you had erected to contain your rubbish. Environmentalist you are not despite your claims.
P.P.S. My first business venture after design
school was making furniture from reclaimed extinct American Chestnut
lumber in the early nineties. I've never bought a new car, only previously-owned trucks for
work, which I drove into the ground. Never bought a new house, only rehabs, only multi families. Never had a lawn that wasn't a vegetable garden. Never didn't ride a bike or use mass transit to get to
work except in a truck. I buy most of my
food from a farmer. I live in one of the most densely populated cities in my country (check your carbon footprint zip code map). I average less than one jet-travel trip per year. I don't own a car and haven't had a ruck in over a dozen years as a lifestyle choice. I live on a thirty year old
boat and have no room in my life for consumer crap and I don't buy into the system. I used FSC Certified Sustainable Jatoba
lumber that was over-run stock from a LEED certified
project to replace my teak-and-holly
cabin sole and I used PTSYP for my
cockpit sole. Really the pot-kettle-black-game doesn't work with me, but I appreciate the sentiment.