Happy Sunday Everyone!
I hope you’re having a good day? If not there’s still time. This is one of two posts for this week’s ‘Sustainable Sunday’. Its sister post is full of hope and positive action. Do you have a personal story to share about trying to live more sustainability? I’d love to hear, celebrate and help share them. What are your triumphs and challenges large and small? We all have both, whether living off-grid or seeking out more sustainability in our cities. I was recently overjoyed at finding crisps in compostable bags, and steel straws. From beach cleans to handmade shopping bags, train commutes to swapping plastic cutlery for bamboo, from window box herbs to homegrown potatoes, what’s your story?
We’re all part of the big story, though the poem below includes one type of person who thinks they are not. It is also the story of three people for whom making positive change is routine, almost unnoticed. Alone, we feel things cannot change because none of us can do everything. Together though, we can shift the tides of oceans one wave at a time.
Rush Hour
“The Government should do something about this!”
Says the man, speaking of climate change
As he drives his four by four through rush hour traffic,
If I ask what he does he’ll disengage
Or say he recycles his newspapers,
My mind recycles definitions of ‘tragic’
As he blames the factories in Asia,
Plastic knick-knacks from China
Dangle from his windscreen,
As he shouts that others should “go green!”
In the next car, colleagues nattering
About their weekend plans,
Carsharing, hardly noticing the jam
The passenger’s husband is cycling
Home from his shift at the plant,
A quick text to remember the washing
As the iPod recycles Wham.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch 
“As he blames the factories in Asia,
Plastic knick-knacks from China
Dangle from his windscreen,”
I struggle with my own complicity in the destruction of the planet. I look around me ans see tinsel left back from Christmas, bought at the dollar store. disposable plastic bags from the supermarket (use them to collect garbage, but still…)
One thing I do right though is to keep my mindset that came from growing up in Jamaica, which is to use a thing until it can go no further. I have a water bottle from 4 years ago – it used to be my daughter’s for school. The drawing of Snoopy on his doghouse is chipped in places, there are dents here and there and the rubber gasket is discolored, but I continue to use it. So too with a lot of my clothes and shoes. Same for furniture.
Here’s a post I wrote a while back that you might find interesting. https://bit.ly/2J6JrlW No obligation to read, just ties in with Sustainability Sunday.
Thank you for your honest, self aware and inspiring comment, Jackie. I love your mindset of using a thing until it can go no further. I think objects can often have stories and would love to do a post on this theme. I’d love to include your words in it, fully credited and linked to your blog, if you are happy for me to do that? I also read your post and loved it. Would love to reblog one Sunday. Totally up to you. Have a lovely week!