I am a WASTE WARRIOR, in the words of National Geographic! For three years I have walked along the kibbutz fence and gathered waste and garbage left there. Having read now about Earth Day, this means I have inadvertently taken part in ‘The Great Clean Up’. I find that to see the mess cleaned up makes the walk more pleasant and I enjoy much more. It is incredible to see that no matter how much waste I pick up, the amount is never reduced, showing the mis-management of our garbage and waste, that is left to litter all over. I have yet to walk all 3 km along the fence without any waste in my way. I enjoy the views of the desert as a contrast to the green of the kibbutz; part of my enjoyment is also to see the birds and imagine that they too enjoy a cleaner environment!
I share here some of the photos I have taken in the last year, my third year of “Mission Clean Fence”, a GRANDMOTHER’S war against local mismanagement of waste, litter and plastic garbage:
< Our white sparrow is still around
The beautiful, colorful and noisy peacock; not many are left..
< The woodpecker that knocks on the door, sorry on the tree
The white dove of peace (I wish…)
< The lapwing couple, they get very alarmed and noisy when I approach, they probably have a nest and chicks close, but I have never seen it.
The wheatear is distinct even if is small
< The hoopoe was not disturbed by my walking by, it continued its breakfast knowing I would not harm it.
The colorful bee-eater
< The sunbird, is very fast and difficult to photograph, but here he is!
We do not often see the black raven on the kibbutz, but one morning there were 3 of them!
< The grey crow we see a lot on the kibbutz; finding left overs from humans, they often fly off to eat alone, I am not sure what this crow caught: salty chips perhaps, straight from the plastic bag. I heard the noise of the plastic bag above me on the light pole.
Another grey crow gathers as much bamba as he can, he does not leave anything to his friend, almost human behavior.
I am not the only WASTE WARRIOR, here you see the GRANDMOTHERS against kibbutz garbage,
I am too big to crawl through the fence, but Havi and Gizella can and did; they cleaned the area between the two fences. I salute you and encourage everybody to give a standing applause to these strong KIBBUTZ GRANDMOTHERS! Girls, soon we need to do it again, waste is piling up too fast.
We are at the moment at war and at a stand-off and dead end in Gaza, our kidnapped friends are pawns in an ugly political game that the political leadership refuses to acknowledge and to solve; because of that, I assume that you probably did not notice that on April 9, 2024, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that a group of Swiss GRANDMOTHERS are right in claiming that their government failed to protect them from climate change; thus, declaring climate change is a human rights issue. Some newspapers called that an absurd ruling. To me it means that the court want to stress that it is the RIGHT thing to do: to protect the environment, our grandchildren.
For the past 54 years April 22 has been celebrated as Earth Day, this year 2024 the theme is “PLANET vs PLASTICS”. That brings me to an Italian article in the New England Journal of Medicine from March 7 2024 with an editorial. They had 257 patients who underwent resection of atherosclerotic plaques of their carotid arteries, 58% of patients had evidence of plastic microparticle in their plaques. All patients were followed up for a mean of 34 months; patients with evidence of plastic microparticles had a 4.5 increased risk of death, stroke or myocardial infarction compared to patients without plastic particle in their plaques. Showing that micro-plastics causes human disease and increased mortality. It is not clear how the small plastic particles came into the human body; the possibilities are: eating polluted food, drinking polluted fluids or inhaling polluted air. My conclusion is we must avoid plastic pollution, in particular we must reduce the amount of one-time use plastic stuff.
From the editorial to the Italian article, I took the above figure about the amount of plastic produced 1950-2017; 5300 million tons (almost 60%) of all plastic has been thrown away after one time use, littering our environment, the desert, the oceans. On my morning walks along the kibbutz fence I pick up plastic, plastic and more plastic. The editorial says that the plastic crisis has grown insidiously; but inaction is no longer an option. I agree.
My pick-ups from one recent morning: plastic, plastic and more plastic.
Walking the kibbutz, I have come to know the areas where I find most litter and waste. I feel very frustrated at places where I expected less littering, not more. For example, near the regional school, I expected teachers would be knowledgeable about the importance of reducing littering and keeping a clean environment; furthermore, I expected teachers as role models for our kids along with their parents. A saying in the national parks is that in Nature you only leave your foot-print.
The academic school year 2023/24 started on Sunday September 3rd, so the Thursday before I cleaned the area where the teachers park their cars and the wadi: 2.5 big bags of full of plastic, one time use cups and bottles, I thought that would make a more welcoming and pleasant start of the school year. A week later I went over the area again and was extremely disappointed and frustrated, to find that a lot of one time use coffee cups had been thrown into the wadi. I believe coffee cups are adult waste not from kids.
>A week after the start of the school year: recent coffee cups in the parking area and the wadi. I am disappointed and frustrated……
Above: The round-about at the school: a camel standing on synthetic grass (??!!), about the latter somebody wrote in the kibbutz paper: “Have you gone completely crazy, synthetic grass ??!!”, a lot of waste littering the synthetic grass.
I expected school teachers to be aware and knowledgeable that littering of the environment is not RIGHT.
Another point of frustration for me is when the lawn-mower man cut the grass around the kibbutz.
I expected that the lawn-mower man to have a certain flair for avoiding pollution of the grass, ground and the garden, meaning that before mowing the lawn he would pick up what one- time- use plastic litter on the grass. But that does not happen: he cuts the grass together with bigger pieces of plastic that become smaller plastic pieces which you do not see unless you walk on the grass; but this is still pollution of the ground under the real grass, it will enter the ground and the biological cycle; shameful. I wonder if it is ignorance, stupidity or laziness that the lawn-mower man does not pick up the waste but just mows over it: out of sight, out of mind. Bad policy; not right.
< I see the one time use plastic cup left to be cut to small pieces
NOT RIGHT, cut to smaller pieces
A few photos that made me laugh and cry at the same time:
< In Hebrew you would ask – ‘who is mama’s genius boy, to do such a thing?’
Do not worry, the garbage truck took what was inside the bin, I cleaned up the large amount of waste left on the ground.
For 3 months many evacuees from the border area were staying at the lodge; they asked why bother to put waste in the small bins, when nobody cares to empty them. Very frustrating!
My Dear tells me that I am naïve and not very realistic, expecting too much of people, they do not care about the environment. But I wonder if that is correct; if you ask people, they tell you, they do care about pollution, littering of the environment, the plastic crisis, global warming, extreme weather and other catastrophes that all goes together. I want my grandchildren to look back and see that their grandmother tried to do something RIGHT about the immediate environment, to make it a nicer and better place, as the sign says at the beginning. What I do may only be a very small drop in an ocean of plastic, but an ocean is built by one drop at a time. I am aware of the amount of plastic stuff I have removed in the last three years; it is just so much you cannot believe it!
It is frustrating that no matter how much I remove, there is not less, only more of the same the next day. That in my opinion shows mis-management of our collective waste.
My main purpose for walking is to keep fit and prevent various chronic diseases. Cleaning the fence as I walk, is a side purpose, but when I see how much waste is flying around with indifference and mismanagement of the garbage. I cannot help but seeing that walking and cleaning are dual purposes of equal importance.
What is left to ask now: what do you do to help this problem?
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