NEXT Tuesday it’s World Environment Day.
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Since it kicked off in 1974, World Environment Day has grown in importance and is now celebrated in more than 100 countries around the globe.
This year’s theme, announced by the United Nations, is Beat Plastic Pollution.
According to the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, the world is swamped by harmful plastic waste.
“Every year, more than eight million tonnes end up in the oceans. Microplastics in the seas now outnumber stars in our galaxy,” Mr Guterres said.
“From remote islands to the Arctic, nowhere is untouched. If present trends continue, by 2050 our oceans will have more plastic than fish.”
Plastic has been a cheap, convenient product that has been part of the story of our health systems, our education and general wellbeing.
But it is certainly time to say goodbye to the wanton use of plastic, and hello to its careful use and re-use and ways of using far less of it.
This coming Tuesday, we can all celebrate the local retailers refusing to hand out free, single-use plastic shopping bags.
The bags have been very handy for so much more than carrying home the shopping: as bin liners, for packing dirty shoes into suitcases, for a hundred and one other household uses. But we do have alternatives.
Day in court for the Wollar Three
NEXT Tuesday local woman Stephanie Luke will be back in the local court at Mudgee to hear the magistrate’s ruling on charges relating to her protest outside the Peabody coal’s Wilpinjong mine site.
Since she was charged just over a year ago, she has been facing a jail sentence of up to seven years under an amendment to the Crimes Act rushed through NSW parliament to quell growing protests at mine sites.
Stephanie, along with Bev Smiles and Bruce Hughes, are now known as the Wollar Three, after the township nearby that has been struggling to survive in the face of the expansion of the coal mine.
There will be people from Bathurst at the courthouse on the day to support the Wollar Three.
For my money it’s a good way to celebrate World Environment Day: standing up for those willing to put their own welfare on the line in the fight to reduce the extraction of fossil fuels which, as well as pumping out greenhouse gases, are the raw material for our single-use shopping bags.