There are many things that are our weakness. One of them being that we are only human from the off. Its amazing how we as people have the ability to learn and to be pioneering and inquisitvie in all that we do. Yet we are still blind to our greatest downfall. Consumerism and wants. We want food to be accessible and readily packed and picked for our money. We take no thought in how many items reach our doorstep, let alone the people involved from production through to manufacturing. There is the transportation, costs and needs in getting the items and components to package the very item being produced. The intensity for sourcing products then transporting them to a factory to ultimately be used for packaging or to be created into something else is astronomical if you look at everything on a grand scale. Your tinned tuna for example; The fishermen catch the fish, often using powered boats to do so. As highlighted recently, the methods of catching tuna is a problem to the ocean’s marine life itself. (Please watch the end of the line Movie about the devastating effects of overfishing). Then once the tuna has been caught it then gets taken back to shore, sold off at auction and then transported again to a factory.
At the factory, in some cases in South East Asian food industries, people are standing in lines like battery chickens and are meeting hefty targets to earn the little money they do. Recently this had the spotlight put on it by the BBC’S Blood Sweat & Takeaways Documentary programme. Once the tuna has been processed by hand by hundreds of workers, it is then canned, labelled and boxed ready for transportation. All the many processes and resources required for the tiny little tin of tuna are massive in comparison to its individual existence. Once canned and boxed it then gets transported again to its delivery destination and the irony is, it may yet see another transportation from store to home by car. Transportation may include aeroplanes, trains and lorries as well as cars when the consumer finally purchases their can of tuna and drives it home, which is more than likely the least impact caused in terms of total transportation emissions. Then there is the manufacturing process for the tins that the tuna comes in, then the labels and ink used for printing the labels. There is also the boxes for transportation as well as the water and other additives that go into the can of tuna itself. All the processes involved for the boxes, cans, ingredients and labels in producing, manufacturing and delivering them also are enormous. There is also the manufacturing and transportation of uniforms that the workers may be wearing, as well as instruments and machinery needed, increasing the transportation emissions further within this whole manufacturing process of canning tuna.
The seas are threatened by us and we need our seas and oceans healthy for survival. We are seeing Tokyo fish markets selling frozen tuna, it has been said it is an attempt at meeting consumer demand and maintaining stock levels, however this maybe not the case and the reality is that we are now emptying our seas and oceans of all of its resources at a rapid level, endangering many species, for which it is possibly not too late to do something about it now, if we act fast. We cannot turn back time and bring back other species that have faced extinction, but we can reserve what we have and have measures in place globally in order to sustain our seas and oceans fish stocks.
There are many things that we can do. Plastic bags are an unpleasant by-product of consumerism and they have been seeing many public awareness campaigns, with supermarkets finally looking to meet consumer demand, educate their customers as well as themselves as a company, they are making an effort in order to reduce the usage of plastic carrier bags. Plastic bags end up in poorer countries amassed in plastic carrier ‘graves’ of the 21st Century, along with being mistaken for food and suffocating many marine life species, once they end up in the oceans. Then there is the problem of computers, and technology, often the carcasses of these unwanted items reach their final destination within poorer, developing countries, causing pollution and waste sites. Waste of all kinds get illegally dumped on a daily basis. With wealthier nations off-loading their unwanted nasties in other developing countries. The EU prohibits exports of rubbish and dump materials, but there is a high percentage of illegal waste disposal that continues, not just from the EU, but world wide in developing countries.
Following Pictures Are From The Guardian:
These images highlight the enormity of the problem of pollution, and this is only in 3 different areas in terms of pollution afected areas. There are many more waste dump sites and other people and countries affected by this. I find the image of the child in the water surrounded by rubbish rather impacting. The photo depicts all the rubbish and waste and how the water has become contaminated. This water is the drinking water and only supply of water that is accessible and available to the local people, they bathe in it, they drink it, they cook with it. They also swim in it amongst the numerous plastic bags, food packaging items and other discarded items that are destined for a life of being known as rubbish. The really devestating fact of this, is that the child never chose to live surrounded by all the waste and toxins. This child will probably consume a tiny proportion of the planets resources within their lifetime in comparison to someone from a developed country. Another persons choices are the consequences of this individuals life and surrounding habitat and environment, it too being our environment also. If we continue to consume at suh a rapid rate, eventually these ‘dumping areas’ will become baron and unihabitable and maybe too full of rusbbish for anything else, when the spaces run out for where we can dispose of our everyday items, what then? When you go to buy something, think of how it has been transported, where it has been transported from, how much packaging it has, is it necessary that I buy a bag of potatoes, rather than loose potatoes and so on. Please for the environment, for your fellow humans, for yourself.
CORN
worldchange